mi|e  ^.  ^,  pm  ^tkarg 


QK6I 
A4 


Date  Due 


FLOWERS 

AND     THEIR     PEDIGREES 


FLOWERS 


AND     THEIR     PEDIGREES 


BY 


GRANT    ALLEN 

AUTHOR    OF 

'coLiN  clout's  calendak'     'vignettes  from  nature' 

ETC. 


NEW    YORK: 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

1902. 


PREFACE. 

These  little  essays  originally  appeared  as  articles 
in  '  Longman's  Magazine,'  the  '  Cornhill  Magazine,' 
*  Macmillan's  Magazine,'  the  '  Gentleman's  Magazine,' 
and  '  Belgravia,'  and  I  have  to  thank  the  editors  and 
proprietors  of  those  periodicals  for  kind  permission 
to  reprint  them  here.  They  are  now  offered  to  the 
public  as  a  first  instalment  of  a  work  which  I  hope 
some  day  more  fully  to  carry  out— a  Functional 
Companion  to  the  British  Flora.  We  know  by  this 
time  pretty  well  what  our  English  wild  flowers  are 
like  :  we  want  to  know  next  why  they  are  just  what 
they  are,  and  how  they  came  to  be  so. 

G.  A. 

Lyme,  Dorset  : 
>/j  1883. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY 


I.    THE    DAISYS    PEDIGREE 
II.    THE    ROMANCE    OF    A    WAYSIDE    WEED 
III,    STRAWBERRIES    .... 


IV.    CLEAVERS 


V.    THE    ORIGIN    OF    WHEAT 
VI.    A    MOUNTAIN    TULIP    . 


VII.    A    FAMILY    HISTORY 


nil.    CUCKOO-PINT       . 


I 

6 

44 
80 
100 
133 
173 
197 
236 


FLOWERS  AND  THEIR  PEDIGREES. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

Our  beautiful  green  England  is  carpeted,  more  than 
any  other  country  in  the  world,  perhaps,  save  only 
Switzerland  and  a  few  other  mountain  lands,  with  a 
perpetual  sward  of  vivid  verdure,  interspersed  with 
innumerable  colours  of  daisies,  and  buttercups,  and 
meadow-sweet,  and  harebells,  and  broader  patches  of 
purple  heather.  It  is  usual  to  speak  of  tropical  vege- 
tation, indeed,  with  a  certain  forced  ecstasy  of  language ; 
but  those  who  know  the  tropics  best,  know  that,  though 
you  may  find  a  few  exceptionally  large  and  brilliant 
blossoms  here  and  there  under  the  breadth  and  shade 
of  equatorial  forests,  the  prevailing  tone  is  one  of  mono- 
tonous dry  greenery  ;  and  there  is  nothing  anywhere 
in  very  southern  climes  to  compare,  as  to  mass  of 
colour,  with  our  Scotch  hillsides,  our  English  gorse- 
clad  commons,  or  our  beautiful  dappled  meadows  and 


rf^a.^ 


Flowers  and  their  Pedio^rees. 


cornfields,  all  aglow  with  the  infinite  wealth  of 
poppies,  bluebottles,  foxgloves,  ox-eye  daisies,  and 
purple  fritillaries.  The  Alps  alone  can  equal  the 
brilliant  colouring  of  our  own  native  British  flora. 
Poor  as  it  is  in  number  of  species — a  mere  isolated 
fragment  of  the  wider  European  groups — it  can  fear- 
lessly challenge  the  rest  of  the  whole  world  in  general 
mingled  effect  of  gaiety  and  luxuriance. 

r^ow,  every  one  of  these  English  plants  and  weeds 
has  a  long  and  eventful  story  of  its  own.  In  the 
days  before  the  illuminating  doctrine  of  evolution  had 
been  preached,  all  we  could  say  about  them  was  that 
they  possessed  such  and  such  a  shape,  and  size,  and 
colour :  and  if  we  had  been  asked  why  they  were  not 
rounder  or  bigger  or  bluer  than  they  actually  are,  we 
could  have  given  no  sufficient  reason,  except  that  they 
were  made  so.  But  since  the  great  principle  of  de- 
scent with  modification  has  reduced  the  science  of  life 
from  chaos  to  rational  order,  we  are  able  to  do  much 
more  than  that  We  can  now  answer  confidently, 
Such  and  such  a  plant  is  what  it  is  in  virtue  of  such 
and  such  ancestral  conditions,  and  it  has  been  altered 
thus  and  thus  by  these  and  those  variations  in  habit 
or  environment.  Every  plant  or  animal,  therefore,  be- 
comes for  us  a  puzzle  to  be  explained,  a  problem  to 
be  solved,  a  hieroglyphic  inscription  to  be  carefully 


Introductory, 


deciphered.  In  the  following  pages,  I  have  taken 
some  half-dozen  of  familiar  English  weeds  or  flowers, 
and  tried  thus  to  make  them  yield  up  the  secret  of 
their  own  origin.  Each  of  them  is  ultimately  de- 
scended from  the  common  central  ancestor  of  the 
entire  flowering  group  of  plants  ;  and  each  of  them  has 
acquired  every  new  diversity  of  structure  or  appear- 
ance for  some  definite  and  useful  purpose.  As  a  rule, 
traces  of  all  the  various  stages  through  which  every 
species  has  passed  are  still  visibly  imprinted  upon 
the  very  face  of  the  existing  forms :  and  one  only  re- 
quires a  little  care  and  ingenuity,  a  little  use  of  com- 
parison and  analogy,  to  unravel  by  their  own  aid  the 
story  of  their  own  remoter  pedigree.  This  is  the 
method  which  I  have  here  followed  in  the  papers 
that  deal  with  the  various  modifications  of  the  daisy, 
of  the  grasses,  of  the  lilies,  of  the  strawberry,  and  of 
the  whole  rose  family. 

Again,  not  only  has  each  English  plant  a  general 
history  as  a  species,  but  it  has  also  a  separate  history 
as  a  member  of  the  British  flora.  Besides  the  question 
how  any  particular  flower  or  fruit  came  to  exist  at  all, 
we  have  to  account  for  the  question  how  it  came  to 
exist  here  and  now  in  this,  that,  or  the  other  part  of 
the  British  Islands.  For,  of  course,  all  plants  are  not 
to  be  found  in  all  parts  of  the  world  alike,  and  their 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


distribution  over  its  surface  has  to  be  explained  on 
historical  grounds  just  as  a  future  ethnologist  would 
have  to  explain  the  occurrence  of  isolated  French 
communities  in  Lower  Canada  and  Mauritius,  of 
African  negroes  in  Jamaica  and  Brazil,  or  of  Chinese 
coolies  in  San  Francisco  and  the  Australian  colonies. 
In  this  respect,  our  English  plants  open  out  a  series 
of  interesting  problems  for  the  botanical  researcher  ; 
because  we  happen  to  possess  a  very  mixed  and  frag- 
mentary flora,  made  up  to  a  great  extent  of  waifs  and 
strays  from  at  least  three  large  distinct  continental 
groups,  besides  several  casual  colonists.  Thus  while 
at  Killarney  we  get  a  few  rare  Spanish  or  Portuguese 
types,  in  Caithness  and  the  Highlands  we  get  a  few 
rare  Alpine  or  Arctic  types  :  and  while  in  Norfolk 
and  Suffolk  we  find  some  central  European  stragglers, 
the  ponds  of  the  Hebrides  are  actually  occupied  by  at 
least  one  American  pond-weed,  its  seeds  having  been 
wafted  over  by  westerly  breezes,  or  carried  uncon- 
sciously by  water-birds  in  the  mud  and  ooze  which 
clung  accidentally  to  their  webbed  feet.  Moreover, 
we  know  that  at  no  very  remote  period,  geologically 
speaking,  Britain  was  covered  by  a  single  great  sheet 
of  glaciers,  like  that  which  now  covers  almost  all 
Greenland :  and  we  may  therefore  conclude  with 
certainty  that  every  plant  at  present  in  the  country 


Introductory, 


has  entered  it  from  one  quarter  and  another  at  a  date 
posterior  to  that  great  lifeless  epoch.  This,  then, 
gives  rise  to  a  second  set  of  problems,  the  problems 
connected  with  the  presence  in  England  of  certain 
stray  local  types,  Alpine  or  Arctic,  Southern  or 
Transatlantic,  European  or  Asiatic.  Questions  of 
this  sort  I  have  raised  and  endeavoured  to  answer 
with  regard  to  two  rare  English  plants  in  the  papers 
on  the  hairy  spurge  and  the  mountain  tulip. 

In  short,  these  little  essays  deal,  first  with  the 
evolution  of  certain  plant  types  in  general ;  and 
secondly  with  their  presence  as  naturalised  citizens  of 
our  own  restricted  petty  insular  floral  commonwealth. 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


I. 

THE  DAISY'S  PEDIGREE. 

Have  you  ever  paused  for  a  moment  to  consider  how 
much  man  loses  for  want  of  that  microscopic  eye  upon 
whose  absence  complacent  little  Mr.  Pope,  after  his 


Fig.  I. — The  Common  Daisy. 

optimistic  fashion,  was  apparently  inclined  rather  to 
congratulate  his  fellow-beings  than  otherwise  ?     What 


TJie  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


a  wonderful  world  we  should  all  live  in  if  only  we 
could  see  it  as  this  little  beetle  here  sees  it,  half 
buried  as  he  is  in  a  mighty  forest  of  luxuriant  tall 
green  moss !  Just  fancy  how  grand  and  straight  and 
majestic  those  slender  sprays  must  look  to  him,  with 
their  waving,  feathery  branches  spreading  on  every 
side,  a  thousand  times  more  gracefully  than  the  long 
boughs  of  the  loveliest  tropical  palm  trees  on  some 
wild  Jamaican  hill-side.  How  quaint  the  tall  cap- 
sules must  appear  in  his  eyes — great  yellow  seed- 
vessels  nearly  as  big  as  himself,  with  a  conical,  pink- 
edged  hood,  which  pops  off  suddenly  with  a  bang, 
and  showers  down  monstrous  nuts  upon  his  head  when 
he  passes  beneath.  Gaze  closely  into  the  moss  forest, 
as  it  grows  here  beside  this  smooth  round  stone  where 
we  are  sitting,  and  imagine  you  can  view  it  as  the 
beetle  views  it.  Put  yourself  in  his  place,  and  look 
up  at  it  towering  three  hundred  feet  above  your  head, 
while  you  vainly  strive  to  find  your  way  among  its 
matted  underbrush  and  dense  labyrinths  of  close- 
grown  trunks.  Then  just  look  at  the  mighty  mon- 
sters that  people  it.  The  little  red  spider,  magnified 
to  the  size  of  a  sheep,  must  be  a  gorgeous  and  strange- 
looking  creature  indeed,  with  his  vivid  crimson  body 
and  his  mailed  and  jointed  legs.  Yonder  neighbour 
beetle,  regarded  as  an  elephant,  would  seem  a  terrible 


8  Flowe7^s  and  theu^  Pedigrees. 

wild  beast  in  all  seriousness,  with  his  solid  coat  of 
bronze-burnished  armour,  his  huge  hook-ringed  an- 
tennae, and  his  fearful  branched  horn,  ten  times  more 
terrible  than  that  of  a  furious  rhinoceros  charging 
madly  through  the  African  jungle.  Why,  if  you  will 
only  throw  yourself  honestly  into  the  situation,  and 
realise  that  awful  life-and-death  struggle  now  going  on 
between  an  ant  and  a  May-fly  before  our  very  eyes, 
you  will  see  that  Livingstone,  and  Serpa  Pinto,  and 
Gordon  Gumming  are  simply  nowhere  beside  you  : 
that  even  Jules  Verne's  wildest  story  is  comparatively 
tame  and  commonplace  in  the  light  of  that  marvellous 
miniature  forest.  Such  a  jumble  of  puzzle-monkeys, 
and  bamboos,  and  palms,  and  banyan  trees,  and  crags, 
and  roots,  and  rivers,  and  precipices  was  never  seen  ; 
inhabited  by  such  a  terrible  and  beautiful  phantasma- 
goria of  dragons,  hippogriffs,  unicorns,  rocs,  chimaeras, 
serpents,  and  wyverns  as  no  mediaeval  fancy  ever  in- 
vented, no  Greek  mythologist  ever  dreamt  of,  and  no 
Arabian  story-teller  ever  fabled.  And  yet,  after  all, 
to  our  clumsy  big  eyes,  it  is  but  a  little  patch  of 
familiar  English  grass  and  mosses,  crawled  over  by 
half  a  dozen  sleepy  slugs  and  long-legged  spiders,  and 
slimy  earthworms. 

Still,  if  you  so  throw  yourself  into  the  scene,  you 
cannot    avoid    carrying  your  own  individuality  with 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


you  into  the  beetle's  body.  You  fancy  him  admiring 
that  fairy  landscape  as  you  would  admire  it  were  you 
in  his  place,  provided  always  you  felt  yourself  quilte 
secure  from  the  murderous  jaws  and  hooked  feet  of 
some  gigantic  insect  tiger  lurking  in  the  bristly  thicket 
behind  your  back.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  greatly 
doubt  whether  the  beetle  has  much  feeling  for  beauty 
of  scenery.  For  a  good  many  years  past  I  have 
devoted  a  fair  share  of  my  time  to  studying,  from 
such  meagre  hints  as  we  possess,  the  psychology  of 
insects  :  and  on  the  whole  I  am  inclined  to  think  that, 
though  their  aesthetic  tastes  are  comparatively  high 
and  well-developed,  they  are,  as  a  rule,  decidedly 
restricted  in  range.  Beetles  and  butterflies  only  seem 
to  admire  two  classes  of  visible  objects — their  own 
mates,  and  the  flowers  in  which  they  find  their  food. 
They  never  show  much  sign  of  deliberate  love  for 
scenery  generally  or  beautiful  things  in  the  abstract 
outside  the  limits  of  their  own  practical  life.  If  this 
seems  a  narrow  aesthetic  platform  for  an  intelligent 
butterfly,  one  must  remember  that  our  own  country 
bumpkin  has  perhaps  a  still  narrower  one  ;  for  the 
only  matter  in  which  he  seems  to  indulge  in  any  dis- 
tinct aesthetic  preference,  to  exercise  any  active  taste 
for  beauty,  is  in  the  choice  of  his  sweetheart,  and  even 
there  he  is  not  always  conspicuous  for  the  refinement 


lo  Flowers  and  theh'-  Pedio-rees. 

of  his  judgment.  But  there  is  a  way  in  which  one 
can  really  to  some  extent  throw  oneself  into  the 
nTental  attitude  of  a  human  being  reduced  in  size  so 
as  to  look  at  the  moss-forest  with  the  eye  of  a  beetle, 
while  retaining  all  the  distinctive  psychological  traits 
of  his  advanced  humanity  :  and  that  is  by  making 
himself  a  microscopic  eye  with  the  aid  of  a  little 
pocket-lens.  Even  for  those  who  do  not  want  to  use 
one  scientifically,  it  opens  a  whole  universe  of  new 
and  delightful  scenery  in  every  tuft  of  grass  and  every 
tussock  of  wayside  weeds  ;  and  by  its  aid  I  hope  to 
show  you  this  morning  how  far  the  eyes  and  aesthetic 
tastes  of  insects  help  us  to  account  for  the  pedigree  of 
our  familiar  childish  friend,  the  daisy.  No  fairy  tale 
was  every  more  marvellous,  and  yet  certainly  no  fairy 
tale  was  ever  half  so  true. 

I  propose  then,  to-day,  to  dissect  one  of  these 
daisies  with  my  little  knife  and  glass,  and  unravel,  if 
I  can,  the  tangled  skein  of  causes  which  have  given  it 
its  present  shape,  and  size,  and  colour,  and  arrange- 
ment. If  you  choose,  you  can  each  pick  a  daisy  for 
yourselves,  and  pull  it  to  pieces  as  I  go  along,  to  check 
off  what  I  tell  you  ;  but  if  you  are  too  lazy,  or  can't 
find  one  within  reach,  it  doesn't  much  matter  ;  for 
you  can  at  least  carry  the  picture  of  so  common  a 
flower  well  enough  in  your  mind's  eye  to  follow  what 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  ii 

I  have  to  say  without  one  :  and  that  is  all  that  is  at 
all  necessary  for  my  present  purpose. 

The  question  as  to  how  the  daisy  came  to  be  what 
it  is,  is  comparatively  a  new  one.  Until  a  short  time 
ago  everybody  took  it  for  granted  that  daisies  had 
always  been  daisies,  cowslips  always  cowslips,  and 
primroses  always  primroses.  But  those  new  and  truer 
views  of  nature  which  we  owe  to  Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  have  lately  taught  us  that  every 
plant  and  every  animal  has  a  long  history  of  its  own, 
and  that  this  history  leads  us  on  through  a  wonderful 
series  of  continuous  metamorphoses  compared  with 
which  Daphne's  or  Arethusa's  were  mere  single 
episodes.  The  new  biology  shows  us  that  every 
living  thing  has  been  slowly  moulded  into  its  existing 
shape  by  surrounding  circumstances,  and  that  it  bears 
upon  its  very  face  a  thousand  traces  of  its  earlier 
stages.  It  thus  invests  the  veriest  weed  or  the  tiniest 
insect  with  a  fresh  and  endless  interest  :  it  elevates 
them  at  once  into  complex  puzzles  for  our  ingenuity 
—  problems  quite  as  amusing  and  ten  times  as  in- 
structive as  those  for  whose  solution  the  weekly 
papers  offer  such  attractive  and  unattainable  prizes. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  this  little  spur  ?  .How  did  it 
get  that  queer  little  point  ?  Why  has  it  developed 
those   fluffy    little    hairs  ?     These    are    the  questions 


12  Flozuers  and  theij^  Pedigrees, 


which  now  crop  up  about  every  part  of  its  form  or 
structure.  And  just  as  surely  as  in  surveying  Eng- 
land we  can  set  down  Stonehenge  and  Avebury  to 
its  prehistoric  inhabitants,  WatHng  Street  and  the 
Roman  Wall  to  its  southern  conquerors,  Salisbury 
and  Warwick  to  mediaeval  priests  and  soldiers,  Liver- 
pool and  Manchester  to  modern  coal  and  cotton — 
just  so  surely  in  surveying  a  flower  or  an  insect  can 
w^e  set  down  each  particular  point  to  some  special 
epoch  in  its  ancestral  development.  This  new  view 
of  nature  invests  every  part  of  it  with  a  charm  and 
hidden  meaning  which  very  few  among  us  have  ever 
suspected  before. 

Pull  your  daisy  to  pieces  carefully,  and  you  will 
«5ee  that,  instead  of  being  a  single  flower,  as  we 
^^enerally  suppose  at  a  rough  glance,  it  is  in  reality  a 
whole  head  of  closely  packed  and  very  tiny  flowers 
j;eated  together  upon  a  soft  fleshy  disk.  Of  these 
there  are  two  kinds.  The  outer  florets  consist  each 
of  a  single,  long,  white,  pink-tipped  ray,  looking  very 
much  like  a  solitary  petal  :  the  inner  ones  consist 
each  of  a  small,  golden,  bell-shaped  blossom,  w^ith 
stamens  and  pistil  in  the  centre,  surrounded  by  a 
yellow  corolla  much  like  that  of  a  Canterbury  bell  in 
shape,  though  differing  greatly  from  it  in  size  and 
colour.     The  daisy,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the  great  family 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


13 


of  Composites,  all  of  which  have  their  flowers  clustered 
into  similar  deni:e  heads  simulating  a  single  blossoni, 
and  of  which  the  sunflower  forms  perhaps  the  best 
example,  because  its  florets  are  quite  large  enough  to 
be  separately  observed  even  by  the  most  careless 
eye. 

Now,  if  you  look  closely  at  one  of  the  central 


Fig.  2. — Ray  floret  of  Daisy. 


Fig.  3.— Central  floret  of  Daisy. 


yellow  florets  in  the  daisy,  you  will  see  that  its  edge 
is  vandyked  into  four  or  five  separate  pointed  teeth 
exactly  like  those  of  the  Canterbury  bell.  These 
teeth  clearly  point  back  to  a  time  when  the  ancestors 
of  the  daisy  had  five  separate  petals  on  each  flower, 
as  a  dog-rose  or  a   May-blossom  still  has.     Again, 


14  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

before  the  flowers  of  the  daisy  had  these  five  separate 
petals,  they  must  have  passed  through  a  still  earlier 
stage  when  they  had  no  coloured  petals  at  all.  And 
as  it  is  always  simpler  and  easier  to  recount  history 
in  its  natural  order,  from  the  first  stages  to  the  last, 
rather  than  to  trace  it  backward  from  the  last  to  the 
first,  I  shall  make  no  apology  for  beginning  the  his- 
tory of  the  daisy  at  the  beginning,  and  pointing  out 
as  we  go  along  the  marks  which'  each  stage  has  left 
upon  its  present  shape  or  its  existing  arrangement 
and  colour. 

The  very  earliest  ancestor  of  the  daisy,  then,  with 
which  we  need  deal  to-day,  was  an  extremely  simple 
and  ancient  flower,  hardly  recognisable  as  such  to  any 
save  a  botanical  eye.  And  here  I  must  begin,  I  fear, 
with  a  single  paragraph  of  rather  dull  and  technical 
matter,  lest  you  should  miss  the  meaning  of  some 
things  I  shall  have  to  tell  you  in  the  sequel.  If  you 
look  into  the  middle  of  a  buttercup  or  a  lily  you  know 
that  you  will  see  certain  httle  yellow  spikes  and 
knobs  within  the  petals,  which  form  a  sort  of  central 
rosette,  and  look  as  if  they  were  put  there  merely  to 
give  finish  and  completeness  to  the  whole  blossom. 
But  in  reality  these  seemingly  unimportant  spikes 
and  knobs  are  the  most  important  parts,  and  the  only 
indispensable  parts,  of  the  entire  flower.     The  bright 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


15 


petals,  which  alone  are  what  we  generally  have  in  our 
minds  when  we  think  of  flowers,  are  comparatively- 
useless  and  inessential  organs  :  a  vast  number  of 
flowers  have  not  got  them  at  all,  and,  in  those  which 
have  got  them,  their  purpose  is  merely  subsidiary  and 
supplementary  to  that  of  the  little  central  spikes  and 
knobs.  For  the  small  yellow  rosette  consists  of  the 
stamens  and  pistils — the  '  essential  floral  organs,'  as 


Fig.  4. — Longitudinal  section  of  Common  Buttercup. 

botanists  call  them.  A  flower  may  be  complete  with 
only  a  single  stamen  or  a  single  pistil,  apart  from  any 
petals  or  other  bright  and  conspicuous  surroundings  ; 
and  some  of  the  simplest  flowers  do  actually  consist 
of  such  separate  parts  alone :  but  without  stamens 
and  pistils  there  can  be  no  flower  at  all  The  object 
of  the  flower,  indeed,  is  to  produce  fruit  and  seed,  and 
the  pistil  is  the  seed-vessel  in  its  earliest  form  ;  while 
the  stamen  manufactures  the  pollen    without  which 


1 6  Flowers  and  their  Pedi screes. 


the  seeds  cannot  possibly  be  matured  within  the  cap- 
sules. In  some  species  the  stamens  and  pistils  occur 
in  separate  flowers,  or  even  on  separate  plants  ;  in 
others,  the  stamens  and  pistils  occur  on  the  same 
plant  or  in  the  same  flower,  and  this  last  is  the  case 
in  almost  all  the  blossoms  with  which  we  are  most 
familiar.  But  the  fundamental  fact  to  bear  in  mind 
is  this — that  the  stamens  and  pistils  are  the  real  and 
essential  parts  of  the  flower,  and  that  all  the  rest  is 
leather  and  prunella— mere  outer  decoration  of  these 
invariable  and  necessary  organs.  The  petals  and 
other  coloured  adjuncts  are,  as  I  hope  to  show  you, 
nothing  more  than  the  ornamental  clothing  of  the 
true  floral  parts ;  the  stamens  and  pistils  are  the 
living  things  which  they  clothe  and  adorn.  Now 
probably  you  know  all  this  already,  exactly  as  the 
readers  of  the  weekly  reviews  know  by  this  time  all 
about  the  personage  whom  we  must  not  describe  as 
Charlemagne,  or  the  beings  whom  it  is  a  mortal  sin 
to  designate  as  Anglo-Saxons.  But  then,  just  as 
there  are  possibly  people  in  the  worst  part  of  the 
East  End  who  still  go  hopelessly  wrong  about  Karl 
and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  and  just  as  there  are 
possibly  people  in  remote  country  parishes  who  are 
still  the  miserable  victims  of  the  great  Anglo-Saxon 
heresy,  so,  doubtless,  there  may  yet  be  persons — say 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree,  ly 

in  the  western  parts  of  Cornwall  or  the  Isle  of  Skye 
--who  do  not  know  the  real  nature  of  flowers  ;  and 
these  persons  must  not  be  wholly  contemned  because 
they  happen  not  to  be  so  wise  as  we  ourselves  and  the 
Saturday  Reviezv.  An  eminent  statistician  calculates 
that  Mr.  Freeman  has  demolished  the  truculent 
Anglo-Saxon  in  970  several  passages,  and  yet  there 
are  even  now  persons  who  go  on  firmly  believing  in 
that  mythical  being's  historical  existence.  And  the 
moral  of  that  is  this,  as  the  Duchess  would  say, 
that  you  should  never  blame  any  one  for  telling  you 
something  that  you  knew  before  ;  for  it  is  better  that 
ninety-nine  wise  men  should  be  bored  with  a  twice- 
told  tale,  than  that  one  innocent  person  should  be  left 
in  mortal  error  for  lack  of  a  short  and  not  wholly 
unnecessary  elementary  explanation. 

The  simplest  and  earliest  blossoms,  then— to 
return  from  this  didactic  digression — were  very  small 
and  inconspicuous  flowers,  consisting,  probably,  of  a 
single  stamen  and  a  single  pistil  each.  Of  these 
simplest  and  earliest  forms  a  few  still  luckily  survive 
at  the  present  day  ;  for  it  is  one  of  the  rare  happy 
chances  in  this  queerly  ordered  universe  of  ours  that 
evolution  has  almost  always  left  all  its  footmarks 
behind  it,  visibly  imprinted  upon  the  earth  through 
all  its  ages.      When  any  one    form  develops  slowly 


1 8  Flowers  a7id  their  Pedie'rees. 

into  another,  it  does  not  generally  happen  that  the 
parent  form  dies  out  altogether :  on  the  contrary,  it 
usually  lingers  on  somewhere,  in  some  obscure  and 
unnoticed  corner,  till  science  at  last  comes  upon  it 
unawares,  and  fits  it  into  its  proper  place  in  the  scale 
of  development.  We  have  still  several  fish  in  the 
very  act  of  changing  into  amphibians  left  in  a  few 
muddy  tropical  streams  ;  and  several  oviparous 
creatures  in  the  very  act  of  changing  into  mammals 
left  in  the  isolated  continent  of  Australia  ;  and  so 
we  have  also  many  low,  primitive,  or  simple  forms  of 
plants  and  animals  left  in  many  stray  situations  in 
every  country.  Amongst  them  are  some  of  these 
earliest  ancestral  flowers.  On  almost  every  wayside 
pond  you  will  find  all  the  year  round  a  green  film  of 
slimy  duckweed.  This  duckweed  is,  as  it  were,  the 
Platonic  idea  of  a  flowering  plant — the  generic  type 
common  to  them  all  reduced  to  its  simplest  elements. 
It  has  no  roots,  no  stem,  no  branches,  no  visible 
blossom,  no  apparent  seed  ;  it  consists  merely  of  soli- 
tary, roundish,  floating  leaves,  budding  out  at  the 
edge  into  other  leaves,  and  so  spreading  till  it  covers 
the  whole  pond.  But  if  you  look  closely  into  the 
slimy  mass  in  summer  time,  you  may  be  lucky 
enough  to  catch  the  weed  in  flower — though  not 
unless  you  have  a  quick  eye  and  a  good  pocket-lens. 


The  Daisy^s  Pedigree, 


19 


The  flowers  consist  of  one,  and  sometimes  two, 
stamens  and  a  pistil,  growing  naked  out  of  the  edge 
of  the  leaf  No  one  but  a  botanist  could  ever  recog- 
nise their  nature  at  all,  for  they  all  look  like  mere 
yellowish  specks  on  the  slender  side  of  the  green 
frond  ;   but   the   pistil  contains  true  seeds,  and  the 


Fig.  5. — Frond  and  flower  of  Duckweed. 


stamens  produce  true  pollen,  and  from  the  botanical 
standpoint  that  settles  the  question  of  their  floral 
nature  at  once.  They  are,  in  fact,  representatives  of 
the  simplest  original  form  of  flower,  preserved  to  our 
own  day  on  small  stagnant  ponds,  where  the  com- 
petition of  other  plants  does  not  press  them  hard  as 
it  has  pressed  their  congeners  on  dry  land  or  in  open 


20  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

lakes  and  rivers.^  From  some  such  simple  form  as 
this  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  all  existing  flowering 
plants  are  ultimately  descended. 

In  most  modern  flowers,  however,  each  blossom 
contains  several  stamens  and  several  carpels  (or  pistil- 
divisions),  and  the  way  in  which  such  a  change  as 
this  might  come  about  can  be  easily  imagined  ;  for 
even  in  many  existing  plants,  where  the  separate 
flowers  have  only  a  single  stamen  or  a  single  pistil 
each,  they  are  nevertheless  so  closely  packed  together 
that  they  almost  form  a  single  compound  flow^er,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  bur-reed  and  the  various  catkins, 
not  to  mention  the  arum  and  the  spurge,  where  only 
a  trained  eye  can  make  out  the  organic  separateness. 
I  shall  not  trouble  you  much,  however,  with  these 
earlier  stages  in  the  development  of  the  daisy,  both 
because  I  shall  describe  them  elsewhere  in  part, 
a  propos  of  other  subjects,  and  because  the  later  stages 
are  at  once  more  interesting  and  more  really  instruc- 
tive. It  must  suffice  to  say  that  at  some  very 
ancient  period  the  ancestors  of  the  daisy,  and  of 
one  half  the  other  modern  flowers,  had  acquired  an 
arrangement  of  stamens  and  pistils  in  groups  of  five, 

'  In  all  probability,  the  duckweed  is  not  itself  a  really  primitive 
type,  but  a  degraded  descendant  of  higher  ancestors.  This,  however, 
does  not  prevent  it  from  standing  as  an  excellent  representative  of  the 
real  original  unspecialised  flowering  plant,  which  must  have  been  quite 
as  simple  in  structure. 


The  Daisy's  Pedis^ree. 


21 


SO  that  each  compound  flower  had  as  a  rule  a  pistil 
of  five  or  ten  carpels,  surrounded  by  a  row  of  five 
or  ten  stamens.  And  almost  all  their  existing  de- 
scendants still  bear  obvious  traces  of  this  original 
arrangement  in  rows  of  fives.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  ancestors  of  our  lilies,  and  of  the  other  half  of  our 
modern  flowers,  had  about  the  same  period  acquired 


u^m. 


a.  Carpels  or  ovaries  ;  b,  stamens  ;  c,  petals  ;  d,  calyx. 
Fig.  6. — Diagram  of  primitive  dicotyledonous  flower. 

an  arrangement  in  rows  of  three.  And  of  this  other 
ternary  arrangement  all  their  existing  descendants  still 
bear  similar  traces.  In  fact,  most  flowers  at  the 
present  day  show  clear  signs  of  being  derived  either 
from  the  original  five-stamened  or  the  original  three- 
stamened  blossom.  I  don't  mean  to  say  that  this  is 
the  only  mark  of  distinction  between  the  two  great 
groups  :  on  the  contrary,  it  is  only  a  very  minor  one  ; 


2  2  Flowers  and  their  Pediorees. 

but  it  is  for  our  present  purpose  the  one  of  capital 
importance. 

The  very  primitive  five-parted  common  ancestor 
of  the  daisy,  the  rose,  the  buttercup,  and  our  other 
quinary  flowers,  was  still  an  extremely  simple  and 
inconspicuous  blossom.  It  had  merely  green  leaves 
and  plain  flower-stems,  surmounted  by  a  row  of  five 


4  0^ 


a,  Carpels  or  ovaries  ;  b,  stamens,  inner  row  ;  c,  stamens,  outer  row ; 
d,  petals  ;  e,  calyx. 

Fig.  7. — Diagram  of  primitive  monocotyledonous  flower. 

or  ten  stamens,  inclosing  five  or  ten  carpels.  Perhaps 
beneath  them  there  may  have  been  a  little  row  of 
cup-shaped  green  bracts,  the  predecessors  of  the  calyx 
which  supports  all  modern  flowers  ;  but  of  this  we 
cannot  be  at  all  sure.  At  any  rate,  it  had  no  bright- 
coloured  petals.  The  origin  of  these  petals  is  due  to 
the  eyes  and  selective  tastes  of  insects  ;  and  we  must 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  23 

look  aside  for  a  moment  at  the  way  in  which  they 
have  been  produced,  in  order  rightly  to  understand 
the  ancestry  of  the  daisy. 

No  pistil  ever  grows  into  a  perfect  fruit  or  sets  ripe 
and  good  seeds  until  it  is  fertilised  by  a  grain  of  pollen 
from  a  stamen  of  its  own  kind.  In  some  plants  the 
pollen  is  simply  allowed  to  fall  from  the  stamens  on 
to  the  pistil  of  the  same  flower ;  but  plants  thus  self- 
fertilised  are  not  so  strong  or  so  hearty  as  those 
which  are  cross-fertilised  by  the  pollen  of  another. 
The  first  system  resembles  in  its  bad  effect  the  habit 
of  '  breeding  in  and  in  '  among  animals,  or  of  too 
close  intermarriages  among  human  beings  ;  while  the 
second  system  produces  the  same  beneficial  results  as 
those  of  cross-breeding,  or  the  introduction  of  *  fresh 
blood '  in  the  animate  world.  Hence,  any  early 
plants  which  happened  to  be  so  constituted  as  to 
allow  of  easy  cross-fertilisation  would  be  certain  to 
secure  stronger  and  better  seedlings  than  their  self- 
fertilised  neighbours  ;  and  wherever  any  peculiar  form 
or  habit  has  tended  to  encourage  this  mode  of  setting 
seeds,  the  plants  have  always  prospered  and  thriven 
exceedingly  in  the  struggle  for  existence  with  their 
less  fortunate  congeners.  A  large  number  of  flowers 
have  thus  become  specially  adapted  for  fertilisation 
by  the  wind,  as  we  see  in   the  case   of  catkins   and 


24  Flowers  and  tJicir  Pedigrees. 

grasses,  where  the  stamens  hang  out  in  long  pendu- 
lous clusters,  and  the  pollen  is  easily  wafted  by  the 
breeze  from  their  waving  filaments  to  the  pistils  of 
surrounding  flowers.  In  such  cases  as  these,  the 
stamens  are  generally  very  long  and  mobile,  so  that 
the  slightest  breath  shakes  them  readily  ;  while  the 
sensitive  surface  of  the  pistil  is  branched  and  feathery, 
so  as  readily  to  catch  any  stray  passing  grain  of  wind- 
borne  pollen. 

But  there  are  other  flowers  which  have  adopted  a 
different  method  of  getting  the  pollen  conveyed  from 
one  blossom  to  another,  and  this  is  upon  the  heads 
and  legs  of  honey-eating  insects.  From  the  very 
first,  insects  must  have  been  fond  of  visiting  flowers 
for  the  sake  of  the  pollen,  which  they  used  to  eat  up 
without  performing  any  service  to  the  plant  in  return, 
as  they  still  feloniously  do  in  the  case  of  several  wind- 
fertilised  species  ;  and  to  counteract  this  bad  habit  on 
the  part  of  their  unbidden  guests,  the  flowers  seem  to 
have  developed  a  little  store  of  honey  (which  the 
insects  prefer  to  pollen),  and  thus  to  have  turned  their 
visitors  from  plundering  enemies  into  useful  allies  and 
friends.  For  even  the  early  pollen-eaters  must  often 
unintentionally  have  benefited  the  plant,  by  carrying 
pollen  on  their  heads  and  legs  from  one  flower  to 
another  ;  but  when  once  the  plant  took  to  producing 


jT^"^ 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  25 

honey,  the  insects  largely  gave  up  their  habit  of 
plundering  the  pollen,  and  went  from  blossom  to 
blossom  in  search  of  the  sweet  nectar  instead.  As 
they  did  so,  they  brushed  the  grains  of  pollen  from 
the  stamens  of  one  blossom  against  the  pistil  of  the 
next,  and  so  enabled  the  flowers  to  set  their  seed 
more  economically  than  before. 

Simultaneously  with  this  change  from  fertilisation 
by  the  wind  to  fertilisation  by  insects,  there  came  in 
another  improvement  in  the  mechanism  of  flowers. 
Probably  the  primitive  blossom  consisted  only  of 
stamens  and  pistil,  with,  at  best,  a  single  little  scale 
or  leaf  as  a  protection  to  each.  But  some  of  the  five- 
rowed  flowers  now  began  to  change  the  five  stamens 
of  the  outer  row  into  petals  ;  that  is  to  say,  to  produce 
broad,  bright-coloured,  and  papery  flower-rays  in  the 
place  of  these  external  stamens.  The  reason  why 
they  did  so  was  to  attract  the  insects  by  their  brilliant 
hues  ;  or,  to  put  it  more  correctly,  those  flowers  which 
happened  to  display  brilliant  hues  as  a  matter  of  fact 
attracted  the  insects  best,  and  so  got  fertilised  oftener 
than  their  neighbours.  This  tendency  on  the  part  of 
stamens  to  grow  into  petals  is  always  very  marked, 
and  by  taking  advantage  of  it  gardeners  are  enabled 
to  produce  what  we  call  double  flowers  ;  that  is  to 
say,  flowers  in  which  all  the  stamens  have  been  thus 


26  Floiucrs  and  their  Pedigrees. 

broadened  and  flattened  into  ornamental  rays.  Even 
amongst  wild  flowers,  the  white  water-lily  shows  us 
every  gradation  between  fertile  pollen-bearing  true 
stamens  and  barren  broad-bladed  petals.  To  put  it 
shortly  and  dogmatically,  petals  are  in  every  case 
merely  specialised  stamens,  which  have  given  up 
their  original  function  of  forming  pollen,  in  order  to 
adopt  the  function  of  attracting  insects. 


Fig.  8. — Transition  from  stamen  to  petal  in  White  Water-lily. 

The  five-rowed  ancestors  of  the  daisy  found  a 
decided  advantage  in  thus  setting  apart  one  outer 
row  of  stamens  as  coloured  advertisements  to  lure  the 
insects  to  the  honey,  w^hile  they  left  the  inner  rows  to 
do  all  the  real  work  of  pollen-making.  They  very 
rapidly  spread  over  the  world,  and  assumed  very 
various  forms  in  various  places.  But  wherever  they 
went,  they  always  preserved  more  or  less  trace  of 
their  quinary  arrangement ;  and  to  this  day,  if  you 
pick  almost  any  flower  belonging  to  the  same  great 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree,  27 

division  of  dicotyledons  (the  name  is  quite  unim- 
portant), you  will  find  that  it  has  at  least  some  trace 
of  its  original  arrangement  in  rows  of  five.  The 
common  stonecrop  and  its  allies  keep  up  the  arrange- 
ment best  of  any  ;  for  they  have  each,  as  a  rule,  five 
petals  ;  each  petal  has  its  separate  bract,  making  a 
calyx  or  flower-cup  of  five  pieces  or  sepals  ;  inside 
are  one  or  two  rows  of  five  stamens  each  ;  and  in  the 
centre,  a  pistil  of  five  carpels.  Such  complete  and 
original  symmetry  as  this  is  not  now  common  ;  but 
almost  all  the  five-rowed  flowers  retain  the  same  gen- 
eral character  in  a  somewhat  less  degree.  The  but- 
tercup, for  example,  has  one  outer  row  of  five  sepals, 
then  five  petals,  and  then  several  crowded  rows  of 
stamens  and  carpels.  And  in  the  petals  at  least  the 
harmony  is  generally  complete.  There  are  five  in 
the  dog-rose,  in  the  violet,  in  the  pea-blossom,  in  the 
pink,  in  the  geranium,  and  (speaking  generally)  in 
almost  every  plant  that  grows  in  our  gardens, 
our  fields,  or  our  w^oodlands,  unless  it  belongs  to 
the  other  great  division  of  trinary  flowers,  with 
all  their  organs  in  groups  of  three.  And  now,  if 
you  will  pull  open  one  of  the  inner  yellow  florets  of 
your  daisy,  you  will  see  that  it  has  five  stamens 
and  five  little  lobes  to  the  bell-shaped  corolla,  to 
show  its  ancestry  plainly  on  its  face,  and  '  to  witness 
if  I  lie.' 


28  Flowers  a7id  their  Pedigrees. 

But  the  original  brig-ht  coloured  ancestor  of  the 
daisy  must  have  had  five  separate  petals,  like  the 
dog-rose  or  the  apple-blossom  at  the  present  day. 
How  then  did  these  petals  grow  together  into  a  single 
bell-shaped  corolla,  as  we  see  them  now  in  the  finished 
daisy  ?  Well,  the  stages  and  the  reasons  are  not 
difficult  to  guess.  As  flowers  and  insects  went  on 
developing  side  by  side,  certain  flowers  learnt  to 
adapt  themselves  better  and  better  to  their  special 
insects,  while  the  insects  in  return  learnt  to  adapt 
themselves  better  and  better  to  their  special  flow^ers. 
As  bees  and  butterflies  got  a  longer  proboscis  with 
which  to  dive  after  honey  into  the  recesses  of  the 
blossoms,  the  blossoms  on  their  part  got  a  deeper 
*ube  in  which  to  hide  their  honey  from  all  but  the 
proper  insects.  Sometimes  this  is  done,  as  in  the 
larkspur,  the  violet,  and  the  garden  nasturtium,  by 
putting  the  honey  at  the  bottom  of  a  long  spur  or 
blind  sac  ;  and  if  you  bite  off  the  end  of  the  sac  in 
the  nasturtium  you  will  find  a  very  appreciable  quan- 
tity of  nectar  stored  up  in  it.  But  most  highly  spe- 
cialised flowers  have  hit  upon  a  simpler  plan,  which 
is  to  run  all  their  petals  together  at  the  bottom  into  a 
tube,  so  long  that  no  useless  insect  can  rob  the  honey 
without  fertilising  the  plant,  and  so  arranged  that  the 
proboscis  of  the  bee  or  butterfly  can  rub  against  the 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


29 


stamens  and  pistil  on  the  way  down.  In  pinks  and 
their  allies  we  see  some  rude  approach  to  this  mode 
of  growth  ;  for  there  each  petal  has  a  long  claw  (as  it 
is  called),  bearing  the  expanded  part  at  the  end  ;  and 
these  claws  when  firmly  pressed  together  by  the  calyx 
practically  form  a  tube  in  five  pieces  :  but  in  the  per- 


FlG.  9.  — Corolla  of  Primrose. 


Fig.  id. — Corolla  of  Harebell. 


fectly  tubular  flowers,  like  the  primrose,  the  arrange- 
ment is  carried  a  great  deal  further  ;  for  there  we 
have  the  claws  all  grown  into  a  single  piece,  with  the 
expanded  petals  forming  a  continuous  fringe  of  five 
deeply  cleft  lobes,  representing  the  five  original  and 
separate  pieces  of  the  pinks. ^  Now,  in  the  primrose, 
again,  we  still  find  the  five  petals  quite  distinct  at  the 

'  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  daisies  or  primroses' are 
descended  from  pinks  ;  that  would  convey  a  wholly  mistaken  notion  ; 
but  merely  that  the  ancestors  of  the  daisy  once  passed  through  a  some- 
what analogous  stage. 


30  Flowers  and  tJieir  Pedigrees. 

edge,  though  their  lower  portion  has  grown  together 
into  a  regular  tube  ;  but  in  the  harebell  or  the  Can- 
terbury bell  we  see  that  the  whole  blossom  has  be- 
come bell-shaped,  and  that  the  five  originally  separate 
petals  are  only  indicated  by  five  slightly  projecting 
points  or  lobes  which  give  the  tubular  corolla  its  van- 
dyked  margin.  And  if  you  look  at  the  little  central 
florets  of  the  daisy  or  the  sunflower,  you  will  observe 
that  they  too  exactly  resemble  the  Canterbury  bell  in 
this  particular.  Hence  we  can  see  that  their  ances- 
tors, after  passing  through  stages  more  or  less  analo- 
gous to  those  of  the  pinks  and  the  primroses,  at  last 
reached  a  completely  united  and  tubular  or  campanu- 
late  form,  like  that  of  the  heath  or  the  Canterbury 
bell. 

There  is  one  minor  point,  however,  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  daisy  which  I  only  notice  because  I  am 
so  afraid  of  that  terrible  person,  the  microscopic  critic. 
This  very  learned  and  tedious  being  goes  about  the 
world  proclaiming  to  everybody  that  you  don't  know 
something  because  you  don't  happen  to  mention  it ; 
and  for  fear  of  him  one  is  often  obliged  to  trouble 
one's  readers  with  petty  matters  of  detail  which  really 
make  no  difference  at  all  except  to  such  Smelfun- 
guses  in  person.  Being  themselves  accustomed  to 
weary  us  with  the  whole  flood  of  their  own  unspeak- 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree. 


able  erudition,  every  time  they  open  their  mouths, 
they  imagine  that  everybody  else  must  be  ignorant  of 
anything  which  he  doesn't  expressly  state  ;  as  though 
you  might  never  talk  of  a  railway  journey  without 
giving  at  full  the  theory  of  kinetic  energy  as  applied 
to  the  coal  in  the  furnace.  For  their  sake,  then,  I 
must  add  that,  when  the  daisy's  ancestors  had  reached 
a  level  of  development  equivalent  to  that  of  the  heath 
and  the  Canterbury  bell,  they  differed  in  one  respect 
from  them  just  as  the  primrose  stiil  does.  In  the 
heath  and  the  harebell,  the  stamens  remain  quite 
separate  from  the  tube  formed  by  the  petals  ;  but  in 
the  primrose  and  the  daisy  the  stalks  of  the  stamens 
(filaments,  the  technical  botanists 
call  them)  have  coalesced  with  the 
petals,  so  that  the  pollen  seems  to 
hang  out  in  little  bags  from  the 
walls  of  the  tube  itself.  This  is 
a  further  advance  in  the  direction 
of  specialised  arrangements  for 
insect-fertilisation  ;  and  it  shows 
very  simply  the  sort  of  cross- 
connections  which  we  often  get 
among  plants  or  animals.  For  while  the  daisy  is 
more  like  the  Canterbury  bell  in  the  shape  of  its 
corolla,  it  is  more  like  the  primrose  in  the  arrange- 


Fig.  II. 
Section  of  floret  of  Daisy. 


Flowcj's  and  their  Pcdicrces. 


ment  of  its  stamens.  Or,  to  put  it  more  plainly, 
while  the  Canterbury  bell  has  hit  upon  one  mode 
of  adaptation  in  the  form  of  its  tube,  and  while 
the  primrose  has  hit  upon  another  mode  in  the  in- 
sertion of  its  stamens,  the  daisy  has  hit  upon  both 
together,  and  has  combined  them  in  a  single  flower. 
And  now,  my  dear  Smelfungus,  having  given  way  to 
your  prejudices  upon  this  matter,  allow  me  to  assure 
you  that  nothing  will  induce  me  to  enter  into  the 
further  and  wholly  immaterial  difference  between 
hypogynous  and  epigynous  corollas.  For  every  one 
but  you,  the  very  names,  I  am  sure,  will  be  quite 
sufficient  apology  for  my  reticence.  These,  in  fact, 
are  subjects  which,  like  the  '  old  familiar  Decline  and 
Fall  off  the  Rooshian  Empire,'  had  better  be  discussed 
Mn  the  absence  of  Mrs.  Boffin.' 

When  the  ancestors  of  the  daisy  had  reached  the 
stage  of  united  tubular  blossoms,  like  the  harebell, 
with  stamens  fastened  to  the  inside  wall  of  the  tube, 
like  the  primrose,  they  must,  on  the  whole,  have  re- 
sembled in  shape  the  flowers  of  the  common  wild 
white  comfrey,  more  nearly  than  any  other  familiar 
English  plant.  The  next  step  was  to  crowd  a  lot  of 
these  bell- shaped  blossoms  together  into  a  compact 
head.  If  you  compare  a  cowslip  with  a  primrose, 
you  can  easily  understand  how  this  is  done.     Accord- 


The  Daisy's  Pcdigi^ee.  33 

ing  to  many  of  our  modern  botanists,  cowslips  and 
primroses  are  only  slightly  divergent  varieties  of  a 
single  species  ;  and  in  any  case  they  are  very  closely 
related  to  one  another.  But  in  the  primrose  the 
separate  blossoms  spring  each  on  a  long  stalk  of  its 
own  from  near  the  root  ;  while  in  the  cowslip,  the 
common  stem  from  which  they  all  spring  is  raised 
high  above  the  ground,  and  the  minor  flower-stalks 
are  much  shortened.  Thus,  instead  of  a  bunch  of 
distinct  flowers,  you  get  a  loose  head  of  crowded 
flowers.  Increase  their  number,  shorten  their  stalks 
a  little  more,  and  pack  them  closely  side  by  side,  and 
you  would  have  a  compound  or  composite  flower  like 
the  daisy.  In  fact,  we  often  find  in  nature  almost 
every  intermediate  stage :  for  instance,  among  the 
pea  tribe  we  have  all  but  solitary  flowers  in  the  peas 
and  beans,  long  clusters  in  the  laburnum  and  wistaria, 
and  compact  heads  in  the  clovers.  The  daisies  and 
other  composites,  it  is  true,  carry  this  crowding  of 
flowers  somewhat  further  than  almost  any  other 
plants  ;  but  still  even  here  you  can  trace  a  gradual 
progress,  some  approach  to  their  habit  being  made  by 
allied  families  elsewhere  ;  while  some  composites,  on 
the  other  hand,  have  stopped  short  of  the  pitch  of 
development  attained  by  most  of  their  race.  Thus, 
certain  campanulas  have  their  flowers  packed  tightly 


34 


Flowej^s  and  thm"  Pcdigi^ees. 


together  into  a  head,  which  looks  at  first  sight  a 
single  blossom,  just  as  deceptively  as  the  daisy  does  ; 
and  a  still  nearer  relative,  the  scabious,  even  more 
strikingly  resembles  the  composite  form.  So  that 
the  daisies  and  their  allies  have  really  only  carried 
out  one  step  further  a  system  of  crowding  which  had 
been  already  begun  by  many  other  plants. 


Fig.  12. — Section  of  head  of  Daisy. 

If  you  look  closely  at  the  daisy,  you  will  see  in 
what  this  crowding  consists.  The  common  flower- 
stalk  is  flattened  out  at  the  end  into  a  regular  disk, 
and  on  this  disk  all  the  florets  are  seated  with  no 
appreciable  separate  flower-stalks  of  their  own.  Out- 
side them  a  double  row  of  leaves  is  arranged,  exactly 
like  the  calyx  in  single  flowers,  and  serving  the  same 
protective  purpose — to  preserve  the  florets  from  the 
incursions  of  unfriendly  insects  ;  while  inside,  the  little 
individual  blossoms  have  almost  lost  their  own 
calyxes  which  are  scarcely  represented  by  a  few  tiny 


TJie  Daisy's  Pedigree.  35 

protuberances  upon  the  seed-like  fruit.  In  the  daisy, 
indeed,  we  may  say  that  the  true  calyx  has  been 
dwarfed  away  to  nothing  ;  but  in  the  dandelion  and 
many  other  composites  a  new  use  has  been  found  for 
it ;  it  has  been  turned  into  those  light  feathery  hairs 
which  children  call  '  the  clock,'  and  which  aid  the  dis- 
persion of  the  seeds  by  wafting  them  about  before  the 
wind. 

Now,  what  has  made  the  daisy  and  the  other 
composites  grow  so  small  and  thick-set }  Probably 
the  need  for  attracting  insects.  By  thus  combining 
their  mass  of  bloom  they  are  enabled  to  make  a  great 
show  in  the  v/orld,  and  to  secure  the  fertilisation  of  a 
great  many  flowers  at  once  by  each  insect  which  visits 
the  head.  For  each  floret  has  its  own  little  store  of 
honey,  its  own  stamens,  and  its  own  pistil  containing 
an  embryo  fruit ;  and  when  a  bee  lights  upon  a  daisy 
head,  h«  turns  round  and  round,  extracting  all  he  can 
get  from  every  tiny  tube,  and  so  fertilising  the  whole 
number  of  florets  at  a  single  time.  The  result  at 
least  proves  that  the  principle  is  a  good  one  ;  for  few 
flowers  get  so  universally  fertilised,  or  set  their  seed 
so  regularly,  as  the  composites.  Though  they  must 
have  reached  their  present  very  high  state  of  evolution 
at  a  comparatively  recent  period,  they  have  spread 
already  over  the  whole  world  ;  and  they  are  far  more 


36  F/ozuc7^s  and  theh^  Pedigrees, 

numerous,  both  in  individuals,  in  species,  and  in 
genera,  than  any  other  family  of  flowering  plants.  In 
fact,  they  are  undoubtedly  the  dominant  tribe  of  the 
whole  vegetable  kingdom.  When  I  say  that  in 
Britain  alone  they  number  no  less  than  120  species, 
including  such  common  and  universal  weeds  as  the 
daisy,  dandelion,  thistles,  groundsel,  camomile,  milfoil, 
hawkweed,  and  burdock,  it  w411  be  clear  that  nine  out  of 
every  ten  ordinary  wayside  blossoms  which  we  see  on 
any  country  walk  are  members  of  this  highly  evolved, 
ubiquitous,  and  extremely  successful  family. 

Still,  we  are  far  from  having  finished  the  pedigree 
of  the  daisy.  We  have  traced  its  general  genealogy 
down  as  far  as  the  common  composite  stock :  we 
have  now  to  trace  its  special  derivation  from  the  early 
common  composite  type  to  the  distinctive  daisy  form. 
Clearly  one  great  point  in  the  daisy's  history  is  yet 
untouched  upon  ;  and  that  is  the  nature  and  meaning 
of  the  white  rays.  We  know  that  the  inner  yellow 
florets  are  (as  it  were)  dwarfed  and  specialised  golden 
harebells  ;  but  we  do  not  yet  know  what  is  the  origin 
of  these  long  outer  streamers,  which  look  so  wholly 
unlike  the  tiny  and  regular  central  bells. 

In  solving  this  problem,  the  other  composites  will 
help  us  not  a  little  ;  for  we  must  always  seek  in  the 
simpler  for  the  interpretation  of  the  more  complex ; 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  2>7 

and  the  daisy,  instead  of  being  the  simplest,  is  one 
of  the  most  developed  representatives  of  the  compo- 
site pattern.  If  you  turn  to  that  tall,  rank-looking 
weed  growing  yonder,  under  cover  of  the  hedge,  you 
will  get  a  good  surviving  example  of  the  earliest  form 
of  composite.  The  weed  is  a  eupatory — '  hemp 
agrimony '  the  country  people  call  it — and  it  has 
small  heads,  each  containing  a  few  tubular  purple 
florets,  all  exactly  the  same  size  and  shape,  and  all 
much  more  loosely  gathered  together  than  in  the 
daisy  or  the  dandelion.  The  eupatory  is  interesting 
as  preserving  for  us  one  of  the  first  stages  in  the 
ancestry  of  the  higher  composites,  after  they  had 
attained  to  their  distinctive  family  characteristics. 
Once  more,  I  don't  wish  you  to  understand  that  the 
daisies  are  descended  from  the  eupatory  :  all  I  mean 
is,  that  their  ancestors  must  once  have  passed  through 
an  analogous  stage  ;  and  that  the  eupatory  has  never 
got  beyond  it,  while  the  daisies  have  gone  on  still 
further  differentiating  and  adapting  themselves  till 
they  reached  their  present  peculiar  form.  Now,  if 
you  compare  this  daisy  with  the  head  of  eupatory, 
you  will  see  that  they  differ  in  two  particulars — the 
daisy  has  outer  rays,  while  the  eupatory  has  none  ; 
and  the  inner  daisy  florets  are  yellow,  while  the 
eupatory  florets  are  purple.     The  latter  difference  is 


38  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

one  into  which  we  cannot  enter  now^ :  it  must  suffice 
to  say  that  when  the  daisy's  ancestors  were  in  the 
eupatory  stage  of  development  they  had  apparently 
all  their  florets  yellow.  This  is  likely,  because  almost 
all  the  modern  composites  of  every  sort  have  yellow 
central  florets,  and  most  of  them  have  yellow  rays  as 
w-ell.  It  is  only  a  few  kinds  that  have  red  or  purple 
central  florets  ;  and,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  only  a  few 
also  that  have  white  or  pink  outer  rays. 

What,  then,  made  the  daisy's  ancestors  produce  a 
row  of  external  florets  so  different  in  shape  and 
colour  from  the  internal  ones  ?  The  answer  is 
exactly  analogous  to  that  which  I  have  already  given 
for  the  origin  of  petals  themselves.  Compare  the 
eupatory  with  the  daisy  once  more,  and  you  will  see 
that  the  one  is  comparatively  inconspicuous,  while 
the  other  is  very  noticeable  and  bright-coloured.  The 
row  of  green  bracts  almost  hides  the  blossoms  of  the 
eupatory  ;  but  the  large  white  rays  make  a  bold  and 
effective  advertisement  for  the  daisy.  Certain  com- 
posites, in  fact,  have  just  repeated  the  same  device  by 
which  the  earliest  petal-bearing  flowers  sought  to 
attract  the  notice  of  insects.  Those  early  flowers,  as 
we  saw,  set  apart  one  outer  row  of  stamens  as  bright- 
coloured  petals  ;  these  later  compound  flower-heads 
have  set  apart  one  outer  row  of  florets  as   bright- 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  39 

coloured  rays.  If  you  examine  the  rays  closely,  you 
will  see  that  each  of  them  is  a  separate  little  flower, 
with  the  stamens  suppressed,  and  with  the  bell- 
shaped  corolla  flattened  out  into  a  long  and  narrow 
ribbon.  Even  these  very  abnormal  corollas,  how- 
ever, still  retain  a  last  trace  of  the  five  original  dis- 
tinct petals  ;  for  their  edge  is  slightly  notched  with 
five  extremely  minute  lobes,  often  nearly  obliterated, 
but  sometimes  quite  marked,  and  almost  always  more 
or  less  noticeable  on  a  careful  examination.  A  daisy 
thus  consists  of  a  whole  head  of  tiny  tubular  bells, 
the  inner  ones  normal  and  regular,  with  corolla, 
stamens,  and  pistil,  and  the  outer  ones  flattened  or 
ligulate,  with  the  stamens  wanting,  and  the  entire 
floret  simply  devoted  to  increasing  the  attractiveness 
of  the  compound  mass.  Pull  off  the  rays,  and  you 
will  see  at  once  what  an  inconspicuous  flower  the 
daisy  would  be  without  them. 

Last  of  all,  the  question  arises.  Why  are  the  outer 
florets  or  rays  pink  and  white,  while  the  inner  florets 
or  bells  are  golden  yellow  ?  When  we  have  solved 
that  solitary  remaining  problem,  we  shall  have  settled 
the  chief  points  in  the  daisy's  pedigree.  Clearly, 
when  the  rays  were  first  produced,  they  must  have 
been  yellow  like  the  central  florets.  The  mere 
flattening  and  lengthening  of  the  corolla  would  not 


40  Flowers  and  their  Pedi 


orees. 


in  itself  tend  to  alter  the  colour.  And  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  vast  mass  of  those  composites  which  have 
progressed  to  the  stage  of  having  rays — which  have 
got  these  two  separate  forms  of  flowers,  for  show  and 
for  use  respectively — have  the  rays  of  the  same  colour 
as  the  central  bells,  that  is  to  say,  generally  yellow. 
Of  this  stage  the  sunflower  is  a  familiar  and  very 
striking  representative.  It  has  bright  golden  central 
florets,  and  large  expanded  rays  of  the  same  colour. 
To  anybody  who  wants  to  study  the  structure  of  the 
daisy  without  a  microscope,  the  sunflower  is  quite  as 
valuable  and  indispensable  as  it  is  to  our  most 
advanced  aesthetic  school  in  painting  and  decoration. 
Moreover,  it  shows  us  admirably  this  intermediate 
stage,  when  the  compound  flower-head  has  acquired  a 
distinct  row  of  outer  attractive  florets,  adding  wealth 
and  expansiveness  to  its  display  of  colour,  but  when 
it  has  not  yet  attempted  any  specialisation  of  hue  in 
these  purely  ornamental  organs.  The  daisy,  how- 
ever, together  with  the  camomile,  the  ox-eye  daisy, 
and  many  other  similar  composites,  has  carried  the 
process  one  step  further.  It  has  coloured  its  rays 
white,  and  has  even  begun  to  tinge  them  with  pink. 
This  makes  these  highest  of  all  composites  the  most 
successful  plants  in  the  whole  world.  If  one  con- 
siders that  daisies  begin  to  bloom  on  January  i,  and 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  41 

go  on  flowering  till  December  3 1  ;  that  they  occur  in 
almost  every  field  far  more  abundantly  than  any 
other  blossom  ;  and  that  each  one  of  them  is  not  a 
single  flower,  but  a  whole  head  of  flowers — it  will  be 
quite  clear  that  they  are  much  more  numerous  than 
any  rival  species.  And  when  we  add  to  them  the 
other  very  common  white-rayed  composites,  such  as 
the  camomiles,  many  of  which  abound  almost  as  freely 
in  their  own  haunts  and  at  their  proper  season,  it  is 
obvious  that  this  highly  evolved  composite  type  is  the 
dominant  plant  race  of  the  old  world  at  least.  In  the 
new  world,  their  place  is  taken  by  a  somewhat  more 
developed  type  still,  that  of  the  Michaelmas  daisies, 
which  have  their  rays  even  more  ornamental  than  our 
own,  and  brightly  coloured  with  mauve  or  lilac  pig- 
ment. All  the  world  over,  however,  in  and  out  of  the 
tropics,  the  commonest,  most  numerous,  and  most 
successful  of  plants  are  ray-bearing  composites  of  one 
kind  or  another,  like  the  daisies,  with  the  rays  differ- 
ing in  colour  from  the  central  florets. 

Finally,  it  may,  perhaps,  at  first  hearing,  sound 
absurd  to  say  that  the  daisy  group,  including  these 
other  composites  with  tinted  rays,  forms  the  very  head 
and  crown  of  the  vegetable  creation,  as  man  does  in 
the  animal  creation  :  and  yet  it  is  none  the  less  true. 
We  are   so  accustomed  to   look   upon   a  daisy  as  a 


42  Flozvers  and  theh^  Pedigrees. 

humble, commonplace,  almost  insignificant  little  flower, 
that  it  seems  queer  to  hear  it  described  as  a  higher 
type  of  plant  life  than  the  tall  pine-tree  or  the  spread- 
ing oak.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  pine  is  a  very- 
low  type  indeed,  as  is  also  the  giant  tree  of  California, 
both  of  them  belonging  to  the  earliest  and  simplest 
surviving  family  of  flowering  plants,  the  conifers, 
which  are  no  better,  comparatively  speaking,  among 
plants,  than  the  monstrous  saurians  and  fish-like 
reptiles  of  the  secondary  age  were  among  animals. 
If  size  were  any  criterion  of  relative  development, 
then  the  whale  would  take  precedence  of  all  other 
mammals,  and  man  would  rank  somewhere  below  the 
gorilla  and  the  grizzly  bear.  But  if  we  take  complexity 
and  perfection  in  the  adaptation  of  the  organism  to 
its  surroundings  as  our  gauge  of  comparative  evolu- 
tion, then  the  daisies  must  rank  in  the  very  first  line 
of  plant  economy.  For  if  we  follow  down  their 
pedigree  in  the  inverse  order,  we  shall  see  that,  inas- 
much as  they  have  coloured  rays,  they  are  superior  to 
all  their  yellow-rayed  allies  (for  example,  the  sun- 
flower) ;  and  inasmuch  as  these  have  rays,  they  are 
superior  to  all  rayless  composites  (for  example,  the 
eupatory)  ;  and  inasmuch  as  composites  generally 
have  clustered  heads,  they  are  superior  to  all  other 
flowers  with  separate  tubular  corollas  (for  example, 


The  Daisy's  Pedigree.  43 

the  heathers)  ;  while  all  these,  again,  are  superior  to 
those  with  separate  petals  (for  example,  the  roses) ; 
and  all  petallcd  flowers  are  superior  to  all  petalless 
kinds  (for  example,  the  pines  and  oaks).  Thus,  from 
the  strict  biological  point  of  view,  it  becomes  quite 
clear  that  the  daisies,  asters,  chrysanthemums,  and 
other  rayed  composites  with  coloured  outer  florets, 
really  stand  to  other  plants  in  the  same  relation  as 
man  stands  towards  other  animals.  That  is  what 
gives  such  a  special  and  exceptional  interest  to  the 
daisy's  pedigree. 


44  Flozuers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


II. 

THE  ROMANCE   OF  A    WA  YSIDE    WEED. 

You  will  not  find  many  pleasanter  or  breezier  walks 
in  England  than  this  open  stretch  of  Claverton  Down  : 
certainly  you  will  find  very  few  with  more  varied 
interest  of  every  conceivable  sort  for  every  cultivated 
mind.  The  air  is  fresh  and  laden  from  the  brine  of 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Gulf  Stream  ;  the  clear  wind  is 
blowing  straight  from  seaward,  not  keen  and  dry  from 
the  Eastern  plains,  but  soft  and  pure  frorn  a  thousand 
leagues  of  uninterrupted  ocean  ;  and  the  view  over 
the  broken  dale  of  Avon,  where  it  cuts  its  way  in  a 
veritable  gorge  through  the  high  barrier  of  the  Bath 
oolite,  stretches  for  miles  over  one  of  the  loveliest  and 
greenest  valleys  in  all  our  lovely  green  England. 
More  than  that — the  whole  history  of  Britain  is  visibly 
unfolded  before  my  very  eyes.  That  bald  roundish 
hill  to  the  right,  with  its  smooth  summit  artificially 
levelled,  and  its  sides  planed  down  into  a  long  glacis, 
is  Little  Solisbury  ;  and  Little  Solisbury,  as  its  name 
clearly  shows,  is  the  very  oldest  Bath  of  all.     For  it  is 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,        45 

the  bury  or  hill-fort  of  Solis,  the  ancient  fortified  town 
of  the  Keltic  and  Euskarian  natives  ;  and  when,  long 
ages  afterwards,  the  Romans  planted  their  station  in 
the  valley  below,  they  naturally  called  the  hot  springs 


Fig.  13. — Hairy  Wood-spurge  (Euphorbia  pilosa). 

which  they  found  there  by  the  name  of  Aquae  Solis  ; 
and  equally  naturally  misinterpreted  the  second  word 
(really  a  native  term,  Sulis)  as  the  genitive  of  Sol,  and 
accordingly  dedicated  their  great  temple  on  the  spot 


46  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

to  Apollo,  Those  straight  white  lines  and  green- 
grown  ridges  on  the  flanks  of  Banagh  Down  and  the 
eastern  heights  are  the  vestiges  of  the  old  Roman 
causeways — the  Fosse  and  its  branches — now  totally 
disused  or  else  degraded  into  modern  cart-roads  ;  and 
the  Institution  Buildings  in  the  valley  below  cover  or 
contain  all  the  remaining  memorials  of  the  stately 
Roman  town.  Back  of  me  again,  on  Hampton  Down, 
stand  the  earthworks  of  Caer  Badon,  the  later  British 
village,  planted  there  when  fear  of  the  heathen  West 
Saxon  invaders  had  driven  back  the  Christian  Welsh- 
man to  the  hills  which  he  had  deserted  for  the  fruitful 
valley  during  the  security  of  the  Pax  Romana  ;  and 
this  long  mound,  on  whose  summit  I  am  standing  to 
catch  the  view,  actually  forms  part  of  Wansdyke,  the 
great  boundary  barrier  behind  which  the  Welshmen 
of  the  Somersetshire  principality  entrenched  them- 
selves, after  the  pagan  English  pirates  had  taken  pos- 
session of  the  Avon  dale  and  of  Bath  itself  The 
decisive  battle  which  settled  the  fate  of  the  city  was 
fought  at  Dyrham  Park,  among  those  blue  downs  on 
the  northern  horizon  ;  and  the  tiny  village  of  English- 
combe,  nestling  below  the  solitary  beacon  of  High 
Barrow  Hill  on  my  left,  marks  in  its  very  name  the 
furthest  westward  extension  of  the  Teutonic  settlers 
towards   the   ever-unconquered  recesses    of   Mendip. 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         47 

As  to  later  associations,  they  are  too  endless  for 
review.  In  the  foreground  lies  the  town,  and  from  its 
midst  towers  the  abbey,  the  last  flickering  effort  of 
English  architecture  before  the  Reformation  choked 
out  its  life  for  ever  ;  a  tall  and  stately  but  very  cold 
specimen  of  good  late  perpendicular  work.  It  rises 
above  the  ancient  temple  of  Minerva,  and  covers  frag- 
ments of  the  older  minsters — that  which  Osric,  king 
of  the  Worcester  men,  gave  to  a  nunnery  in  671  ; 
that  which  Offa  of  Mercia  raised  in  775  ;  that  where 
Eadgar,  first  king  of  all  England,  was  crowned  in 
973  :  and  that  which  the  Angevin  John  of  Tours 
erected  in  1160.  There  to  the  right  is  Lansdown, 
where  the  Parliament's  men  under  Waller  all  but 
wiped  out  the  stout  Cornishmen  who  *  stood  up  for 
their  king '  under  Sir  Bevil  Grenville  in  a  fruitless 
victory  ;  and  the  big  tower  on  the  top  is  Beckford's 
Folly,  built  in  a  fit  of  Oriental  recklessness  by 
'  Vathek '  Beckford,  and  now  the  landmark  of  the 
cemetery  which  spreads  over  his  vanished  domain. 
In  the  combe  to  the  left,  again,  that  huge  pseudo- 
classical  manor-house  is  Prior  Park,  the  vast  rambling 
home  of  Ralph  Allen  ;  and  Ralph  Allen  was  the  ori- 
ginal of  Squire  Allworthy,  whose  grounds,  as  minutely 
described  in  '  Tom  Jones,'  are  here  actually  realised. 
But  if  I  went  on  talking  all  day  I  should  never  have 


48  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

finished  ;  for  the  history  of  the  Bath  valley,  as  seen 
from  Claverton  Down,  is,  as  I  said  before,  the  history 
of  all  England,  visibly  epitomised  in  tangible  realities 
before  one's  very  eyes. 

However,  I  have  not  come  out  to-day  to  hunt  for 
old  relics  among  the  works  of  Caer  Badon,  or  to  trace 
the  curious  bends  and  angles  of  Wansdyke.  A  far 
older  and  stranger  chapter  of  our  history  than  any  of 
these  is  unfolded  by  the  little  wayside  weed  which  I 
have  here  in  my  botanical  case  ;  and  it  was  to  find 
this  very  commonplace  and  uninteresting-looking 
plant  that  I  have  come  out  this  morning.  For  the 
weed  is  the  hairy  wood-spurge,  and  Claverton  Down 
is  the  only  place  in  Great  Britain  where  that  parti- 
cular kind  of  spurge  still  lingers  on.  I  have  got  my 
British  Flora  safe  here  in  my  satchel  ;  and  now  I  am 
going  to  sit  down  on  the  slope  of  Wansdyke  and 
make  quite  sure  that  my  plant  really  tallies  exactly 
with  Dr.  Bentham's  description  ;  for  if  it  actually  does, 
then  I  shall  have  the  pleasure  of  knowing  that  I  hold 
in  my  hand  one  of  the  few  genuine  links  which  yet 
unite  us  with  a  very  distant  past — a  past  compared 
with  which  the  days  when  Wansdyke  was  built,  or 
even  when  Little  Solisbury  was  fortified,  seem  com- 
paratively recent.  If  this  is  In  fact  the  hairy  wood- 
spurge,^  it  and  its  ancestors   have  been   growing  here 

See  fig.  13. 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         49 

on  Claverton  Down  ever  since  the  end  of  the  last 
glacial  epoch  ;  and  it  is  a  relic  of  the  flora  which  once 
bloomed  among  the  lowlands  that  connected  Eng- 
land and  Ireland  with  Brittany,  Spain,  and  the 
Pyrenees.  It  dates  back,  in  short,  to  the  time  when 
Britain  was  still  an  integral  part  of  the  European 
continent. 

A  few  minutes'  examination  with  my  pocket-lens 
is  quite  enough  to  assure  me  that  the  flower  I  have 
picked  is  truly  the  wood-spurge  of  which  I  am  in 
search.  It  is  a  queer,  insignificant  little  plant,  with 
funny  cup-like  green  flowers,  and  odd  jelly-bag 
glands,  very  much  like  most  other  English  spurges  ; 
but  I  see  at  once  on  a  closer  examination  that  it  has 
all  the  distinguishing  marks  of  the  hairy  species — the 
woolly  underside  to  the  leaves,  the  dotted  seed-cap- 
sules, the  loose  umbels  of  blossom,  and  the  long 
branched  rays  supporting  the  straggling  flower-heads. 
I  regard  it,  therefore,  as  a  decided  find  ;  for  the  lane 
that  bounds  the  Prior  Park  estate,  and  this  bit  of 
woodland  on  the  summit  of  Claverton  Down,  are  the 
only  spots  in  England  where  this  particular  plant  is 
now  found.  But  that  is  not  all.  In  itself,  the  fact  of 
its  rarity  would  not  be  enough  to  arouse  any  special 
interest  ;  for  there  are  many  other  wild  flowers  found 
in  only  one  spot  in  Britain — sometimes  garden  kinds 


50  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

escaped  from  cultivation  in  a  suitable  climate,  some- 
times American  straylings,  and  sometimes  high 
Alpine  species  requiring  a  particular  granite,  basalt, 
or  limestone  soil — a  soil  perhaps  to  be  met  with  in 
our  islands  only  on  one  or  two  scattered  Welsh  or 
Scottish  hills  of  the  requisite  height,  ^he  case  of  the 
hairy  spurge,  however,  is  very  different  from  any  of 
these.  It  is  a  southern  European  and  Western 
Asiatic  plant,  and  it  spreads  along  the  Mediterranean 
basin  from  the  Caucasus  to  the  Pyrenees  ;  but  it 
nowhere  comes  any  nearer  to  Britain  than  the  valley 
of  the  Loire.  This  is  what  gives  it  such  a  special 
interest  in  my  eyes.  It  is  not  found  in  Brittany,  it  is 
not  found  in  Normandy,  it  is  not  found  on  the  oppo- 
site coast  of  Picardy,  it  is  not  found  in  Kent  or 
Essex  ;  but  it  suddenly  reappears  here,  out  of  all 
reckoning,  on  Claverton  Down. 

If  the  case  of  the  wood-spurge  were  a  solitary  one, 
it  would  be  easy  enough  to  give  a  ready  explanation. 
The  neighbourhood  of  Bath  is  known  to  be  one  of  the 
warmest  spots  in  England,  having,  in  fact,  its  own 
hot-water  supply  always  laid  on.  This  is  a  plant  of 
warm  countries.  A  bird,  let  us  say,  once  brought 
over  a  single  seed,  clinging  to  its  feet  or  feathers  ;  an 
exotic  flower,  imported  for  the  shrubberies  of  Prior 
Park,  was  packed  in  earth  containing  young  spurges  ; 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         5 1 

a  sailor  introduced  it  by  some  chance  ;  a  botanist 
sowed  it  here  for  an  experiment.  Nay,  perhaps  a 
Roman  settler  at  Aquae  Solis  brought  it  over  with  the 
plants  for  his  Italian  garden.  In  such  or  the  like 
casual  manner  it  got  a  footing  on  Claverton  Down  ; 
and,  as  the  climate  suited  it,  it  has  gone  on  flourishing 
ever  since.  Here,  I  say,  would  be  an  easy  explana- 
tion if  the  case  of  the  hairy  spurge  were  a  solitary 
one ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  hundreds  of 
cases  exactly  like  it.  It  is  quite  a  common  occur- 
rence to  find  a  plant  extend  all  through  Europe  from 
the  Caucasus  to  the  Pyrenees,  then  stop  suddenly 
short,  and  turn  up  again  once  more  incontinently 
in  Devon,  Cornwall,  Kerry,  and  Connemara.  This  is 
such  a  curious  fact  that  it  really  seems  to  call  for 
some  adequate  explanation. 

Let  me  begin  by  noting  a  few  of  the  most  striking 
instances.  There  is  in  the  Bristol  Channel  a  solitary 
rocky  islet  known  by  the  old  Scandinavian  title  of 
the  Steep  Holme — a  name  given  to  it,  no  doubt,  by 
the  wickings  of  the  ninth  century,  who  made  it  their 
headquarters  for  plundering  the  chapmen  and  slave- 
mongers  of  wealthy  Bricgstow.  Now  the  rocky  clefts 
of  the  Steep  Holme  are  still  crimson  in  May  and 
June  with  the  brilliant  red  blossoms  of  the  wild 
pa^ony,  a    flower   which  does   not  elsewhere  appear 


52 


Flowers  and  their  Pedio^rees. 


nearer  to  England  than  the  Pyrenees.  Not  far  from 
Axminster  in  Devon,  again,  there  is  a  warm  sheltered 
nook  in  which  nestles  the  little  village  of  Kilmington. 
Well,    Kilmington    Common    is    a   place   famous   to 


Fig.  14. — Flowers  of  common  Monkshood. 

botanists,  because  it  is  the  one  single  station  in 
Britain  for  a  small  purplish  lobelia,  which  ranges 
elsewhere    only    from    Andalusia   to   central   France. 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         5  3 

Dozens  of  like  cases  may  be  noted  in  the  south- 
western peninsula  of  England  and  the  similarly  situ- 
ated corner  of  Wales  about  Pembrokeshire.  Thus,  to 
lump  a  long  list  briefly,  the  common  blue  monkshood 
is  found  wild  in  South  Wales  and  the  Cornish  district 
only  ;  the  yellow  draba  is  confined  to  old  walls  about 
Pennard  Castle,  near  Swansea ;  the  spotted  rock- 
cistus  occurs  only  in  the  Channel  Islands  and  at 
Holyhead  ;  the  white  rock-cistus  is  peculiar  in  Britain 
to  Brent  Downs  in  Somerset,  together  with  Torquay 
and  Babbicombe  in  Devon  ;  the  Cheddar  pink,  a 
volcanic  plant  of  southern  Europe,  clings  to  the 
crannies  of  the  Cheddar  cliffs  near  Wells,  and  to  no 
other  crag  in  England  ;  the  soapwort  is  wild  only  in 
Cornwall  and  Devon  ;  the  flax-leaved  St.  John's  wort 
grows  nowhere  but  at  Cape  Cornwall  and  on  the 
banks  of  the  Teign  ;  the  crimson  clover  and  Boccone's 
clover  are  entirely  restricted  to  the  peninsula  of  the 
Lizard  ;  so  also  is  the  upright  clover,  save  that  it  is 
likewise  found  in  the  Channel  Islands  ;  the  sand  bird's 
foot  remains  only  at  Scilly  ;  the  Bithynian  vetch  ex- 
tends through  Europe  as  far  north  as  Bordeaux,  and 
then  disappears  again  till  after  a  sudden  leap  it  is 
gathered  once  more  in  Devon  and  Cornwall ;  the 
white  sedum  occurs  in  the  Malvern  Hills  and  in 
Somersetshire  ;  and  the  narrow  buplever  flowers  only 


54  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

at  Torquay,  and  in  Jersey  and  Guernsey.  In  almost 
all,  if  not  in  all,  these  cases  the  plant  is  a  southern  one, 
which  extends  usually  from  the  Caspian  to  Spain,  is 
perhaps  found  as  far  north  as  the  Gironde  or  even 
the  Loire,  and  then  disappears  again  till  it  turns  up 
suddenly  in  some  exceptionally  sheltered  nook  of 
Devon,  Cornwall,  or  South  Wales.  This  is  a  pheno- 
menon which  cannot  surely  be  due  to  chance  alone. 
Indeed,  I  might  greatly  increase  the  list,  but  I  refrain 
only  because  I  am  afraid  of  being  wearisome. 

When  we  turn  to  the  similarly  placed  south- 
western corner  of  Ireland,  the  peculiarities  we  meet 
are  even  more  remarkable.  I  shall  never  forget  my 
surprise  when  once,  after  my  first  visit  to  Nice  and 
Mentone,  I  began  describing  the  beautiful  Provencal 
flowers  to  an  Irish  botanist,  and  was  quietly  an- 
swered, *  Ah,  yes ;  we  have  them  all  at  Killarney.' 
But  it  is  really  true  none  the  less.  The  thick-leaved 
sedum,  after  skipping  all  England  and  Wales,  shows 
itself  suddenly  in  the  Cove  of  Cork.  The  pretty 
Mediterranean  heath,  which  every  winterer  at  Pau 
has  gathered  by  handfuls  on  the  hills  about  Eaux 
Chaudes  or  Cauterets,  jumps  at  a  bound  to  the  coast 
of  Kerry.  The  arbutus,  with  its  clustering  white 
blossoms  and  beautiful  red  berries,  is  similarly  found 
in  Provence  and  again  at  Glengariff.     London  Pride 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         55 

grows  wild  in  Portugal,  western  Spain,  and  the  higher 
Pyrenees,  and  reappears  in  south-western  Ireland. 
Another  pretty  little  saxifrage  jumps  in  like  manner 
from  the  Asturias  to  Killarney.  St.  Dabeoc's  heath 
has  the  same  range.  The  spiked  orchid  takes  a  great 
bound  from  Bordeaux  to  a  single  station  in  County 
Galway.  To  sum  it  up  shortly,  '  Crete,  Auvergne, 
the  Pyrenees,  S.-W.  Ireland,'  is  a  common  technical 
description  of  the  distribution  of  many  beautiful  south 
European  plants. 


Fig.  15. — Flower  and  fruit  of  Arbutus. 

Now,  these  peculiarities  of  distribution  lead  me  up 
pretty  surely  to  the  romance  of  the  hairy  wood-spurge. 
They  show  that  it  did  not  get  here  by  accident.  Like 
the  elephant-headed  god  of  the  Mexicans,  like  the 
debased  traces  of  Buddhism  in  the  Aztec  religion,  they 
raise  an  immediate  curiosity  as  to  their  origin.  What 
we  may  call  the  natural  range  of  British  plants  is  of 
this  sort :  they  have  entered  the  country  from  the 
Continent,  via  Kent,  Sussex,  East  Anglia,  or  Scotland  ; 
and  they  fall  for  the  most  part  under  three  great 
divisions.     The  first  division  consists  of  central  Euro- 


56  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


pean  plants,  which  seem  as  if  they  had  come  in  from 
the  east  :  and  of  these  a  {q.\v  get  no  farther  than  the 
eastern  counties  ;  a  great  many  spread  over  the  whole 
country  ;  and  the  remainder  have  reached  to  the  west 
and  to  Ireland.  The  second  division  is  that  of  the 
Scandinavian  plants,  which  seem  as  if  they  had  come 
in  from  the  north  ;  and  of  these  a  few  stop  short 
in  Shetland,  Orkney,  or  the  Highlands  ;  others  get 
as  far  as  the  midland  counties  ;  and  a  good  many 
straggle  on  into  Kent  or  Cornwall.  The  third  division 
comprises  the  mountain  plants,  which  have  come  in 
from  various  quarters,  and  which  grow  wherever  the 
elevation  and  the  mountain  air  suit  their  constitutions. 
But  my  wood-spurge  agrees  with  none  of  these,  and 
it  clearly  belongs  to  another  southern  class,  which 
cannot  have  entered  Britain  by  any  of  the  customary 
routes  via  Dover,  Harwich,  or  Southampton.  It 
seems  to  have  taken  a  route  of  its  own,  and  to  have 
attacked  England  by  way  of  Bristol  and  Bordeaux. 
Otherwise,  we  should  find  it  and  the  other  peculiar 
west-country  species  in  the  warmer  parts  of  Kent, 
Surrey,  and  the  Isle  of  Wight,  which,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  we  never  do.  If  climate  were  the  only  agent  at 
work,  Ventnor  certainly  has  as  good  claims  as  any 
place  in  England. 

Perhaps  it  seems  a  useless  question  to  inquire  how 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         57 

they  came  there  at  all.  '  Were  they  not  always  there  ?  ' 
somebody  may  ask  me.  And  the  answer  is,  No, 
undoubtedly  not.  You  might  as  well  explain  the 
presence  of  an  English-speaking  colony  on  Pitcairn 
Island  by  the  hypothesis  that  Englishmen  were 
originally  created  in  two  separate  centres — Great 
Britain  and  the  South  Pacific.  Only  some  80,000 
years  since — a  mere  single  swing  of  the  cosmical 
pendulum — every  inch  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 
save  only  an  insignificant  southern  fringe,  was 
wholly  covered  by  the  ice  of  the  last  glacial  period. 
We  know  the  date  with  mathematical  certainty, 
because  the  astronomical  conditions  upon  which 
glacial  periods  have  been  shown  almost  beyond  doubt 
to  depend,  began  200,000  years  ago,  and  ended  80,000 
years  ago.  During  the  interval  between  those  two 
dates,  the  condition  of  each  hemisphere  alternated 
between  long  cold  periods  and  long  hot  periods,  of 
some  10,500  years  each.  During  the  last  cold  spell, 
all  England  and  Ireland  were  in  the  condition  of 
Greenland  at  the  present  day.  The  ice  had  planed 
every  living  thing  clean  off  the  face  of  the  country,  and 
we  may  still  trace  its  scratches  on  the  smooth  granite 
bosses  of  Wales  and  Scotland,  or  find  its  till  and  its 
moraines  on  the  plains  and  valleys  of  East  Anglia 
and  Derbyshire.     Consequently  the  ancestors  of  every 


58  Flozuers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

plant  and  every  animal  now  living  in  Britain  must 
have  come  into  it  after  the  end  of  the  last  long  cold 
spell — that  is  to  say,  roughly  speaking,  some  80,000 
years  since. 

Moreover,  when  Britain  was  repeopled  after  the 
great  ice  age,  it  must  have  been  united  to  the  Conti- 
nent somewhere,  or  else  it  could  not  possibly  possess 
the  large  number  of  European  plants  and  animals 
which  it  actually  contains.'  Had  it  then  been  an 
island,  it  might  have  had  a  considerable  population  of 
ferns  and  small-seeded  flowers,  of  birds  and  winged 
insects,  blown  over  to  it  from  the  shores  of  France  or 
Holland  ;  it  might  even  have  had  a  fair  sprinkling  of 
snails  and  lizards,  or  a  icw  small  quadrupeds,  wafted 
across  on  logs  of  wood,  or  carried  over  accidentally  by 
various  chances  ;  but  it  would  be  quite  impossible 
that  it  should  have  all  the  species  of  large  or  middle- 
sized  wild  mammals  which  we  see  now  inhabiting  it — 
the  red  deer,  the  fallow  deer,  the  otter,  the  badger, 
the  fox,  the  hare,  the  rabbit,  the  weasel,  the  stoat,  the 
marten,  the  hedgehog,  the  wild  cat,  the  mole,  the 
shrew,  the  squirrel,  and  the  water-vole.  Altogether, 
we  have  no  less  than  forty  species  of  British  mammals  ; 
while  the  bear,  the  wild  boar,  the  beaver,  the  reindeer, 

•  I  owe  my  acknowledgments  in  much  that  follows  to  Mr.  A.  R. 
Wallace's  admirable  work  on  Island  Life. 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         59 

and  the  wolf  have  become  extinct  within  the  historical 
period  ;  and  the  wild  white  cattle  even  now  survive 
sparingly  in  Chillingham  Park  and  a  few  other 
scattered  places.  Clearly,  as  none  of  these  animals 
or  their  ancestors  can  have  been  in  Britain  80,000 
years  ago,  they  must  have  come  into  Britain  at  some 
later  date,  across  a  wide  bridge  of  solid  land.  For 
Mr.  Wallace  has  conclusively  shown  that  islands 
which  have  never  formed  part  of  a  mainland  never 
have  any  terrestrial  mammals  at  all  ;  and  that  a  very 
narrow  strait  is  quite  sufficient  to  prevent  the  passage 
of  mammals  from  one  island  to  another.  The  sound 
which  divides  the  Indo-Malayan  region  from  the 
Australian  region  is  hardly  wider  than  that  which 
separates  England  from  France ;  yet  not  one  single 
Australian  mammal  has  ever  reached  the  Indo- 
Malayan  region,  and  not  one  single  Indian  mammal 
has  ever  reached  Australia.  The  kangaroos,  wombats, 
phalangers,  and  cassowaries  of  the  one  district  are 
quite  distinct  in  type  from  the  elephants,  tapirs,  tigers, 
deer,  and  monkeys  of  the  other.  So  that  our  numer- 
ous existing  English  fauna  must  certainly  have  crossed 
over  on  dry  land. 

We  may  take  it  for  granted,  then,  that  the  mass  of 
British  plants  came  in,  from  the  east  and  south-east, 
immediately  after    the  ice  of  the  glacial  epoch  had 


6o  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

passed  away.  For  the  ice  had  driven  man  and  beast, 
herb  and  tree,  southward  before  it  ;  and  even  if  there 
was  a  Httle  fringe  of  what  is  now  Southern  Britain  not 
wholly  glaciated,  yet  its  condition  must  have  been 
like  that  of  the  little  habitable  fringe  in  Greenland, 
and  its  plants  and  animals  (if  any)  must  have  been  of 
thoroughly  Arctic  types.  But  as  the  glaciers  cleared 
away  again,  with  the  return  of  the  sun  to  the  northern 
hemisphere  after  its  long  cold  cycle,  the  southern  and 
eastern  plants  and  animals  must  have  followed  the 
retreating  ice-sheet  from  year  to  year  ;  till  at  last  the 
species  which  used  to  inhabit  Kent  and  the  Isle  of 
Wight  found  their  permanent  home  in  Lapland,  and 
those  which  used  to  inhabit  Greece  and  Italy  found 
their  permanent  home  in  Holland,  Denmark,  and 
Great  Britain. 

This  sufficiently  accounts  for  the  presence  in 
England  and  Scotland  of  the  central  European  and 
Scandinavian  elements ;  but  it  does  not  account  for 
the  presence  of  my  hairy  spurge  and  of  all  the  other 
south-western  species,  belonging  to  the  Pyrenean  and 
Italian  region.  Clearly,  the  ordinary  plants  of  Eastern 
England  are  plants  which  once  spread  uninterruptedly 
from  Warwickshire  to  Central  Europe,  when  the  belt 
of  land  over  the  German  Ocean  was  still  entire  ;  and 
clearly,  too,  the  ordinary  plants  of  the  North  and  of 


Xhe  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         6 1 

Scotland  are  plants  which  once  spread  uninterruptedly 
from  Yorkshire  to  Scandinavia,  during  the  same 
period  ;  while  both  classes  have  been  afterwards 
isolated  in  Britain  by  the  gradual  subsidence  of  the 
intervening  land.  But  this  still  leaves  unanswered  the 
question,  Whence  did  we  get  the  Pyrenean  types  ? 

Perhaps  one  might  be  disposed  at  first  sight  to 
fancy  that  they  came  over  separately,  as  we  know  a 
i^w  American  plants  have  really  done.  There  is  the 
well-known  Canadian  canal  weed,  which  was  intro- 
duced by  a  botanist  into  a  tank  near  Cambridge  in 
1845,  and  rapidly  spread  over  all  England  ;  there  are 
a  few  orchids  and  other  wild  flowers  whose  seeds  have 
apparently  been  carried  across  the  Atlantic  on  the 
feet  of  birds  ;  and  there  are  some  half-dozen  escaped 
garden  flowers,  like  the  evening  primrose,  which  have 
established  themselves  easily  among  some  rare  warm 
spots  in  our  congenial  climate.  Possibly  it  might 
seem  as  though  the  arbutus,  the  hairy  spurge,  the 
Mediterranean  heath,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  southern 
species  in  South-Western  England  or  Ireland  had  got 
across  to  us  in  somewhat  the  same  fragmentary 
fashion,  and  had  succeeded  in  effecting  a  foothold 
only  in  these  warmer  Cornish  and  Irish  nooks.  But 
there  arc  a  great  many  reasons  against  believing  this. 
In  the  first  place,  we  have  the  immense  number  to 


62  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


account  for — at  least  ninety  species,  all  told  ;  which 
is  a  prodigious  item  to  set  down  to  the  chapter  of 
accidents.  For  the  distance  from  Bordeaux  to  Kerry 
is  really  700  miles,  while  the  distance  from  Portugal 
to  the  Azores  (which  are  peopled  with  plants  and 
animals  in  the  most  fragmentary  manner)  is  only  900  ; 
and  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  so  large  a  number  of 
southern  plants  could  permanently  establish  them- 
selves (against  the  prevailing  winds)  in  a  country 
already  occupied  by  a  flourishing  native  flora.  But 
two  more  fatal  objections  are  these  :  First,  our  southern 
plants  are  only  found  in  the  extreme  south-west,  and 
not  in  the  warmest  parts  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  of 
Kent,  or  of  Hampshire.  Even  at  Bournemouth  and 
Ventnor  we  meet  with  none  of  them.  And  secondly, 
they  are  all  evidently  dying  out ;  they  represent  an 
old  flora  which  is  no  longer  adapted  to  the  country, 
not  a  new  flora  pushing  its  way  vigorously  into  regions 
occupied  by  less  congenial  plants.  Every  year  they 
are  disappearing  before  our  very  eyes,  and  many  of 
them  are  from  time  to  time  now  being  expunged  from 
our  floras.  The  Kilmington  lobelia  is  getting  rarer 
as  every  summer  passes  ;  the  wild  asparagus,  once 
common  on  the  Lizard  promontory,  is  now  only  to  be 
picked,  at  the  imminent  risk  of  life  and  limb,  amongst 
the  crannies  of  a  rocky  islet  at   Kynance  Cove  ;  the 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         6^^ 

purple  viper's-bugloss  has  been  driven  to  the  very 
extremity  of  Britain  at  Penzance  ;  while  the  various 
kinds  of  rock-cistus,  the  Steep  Holme  paeony,  and  the 
Cheddar  pink  linger  on  each  only  in  a  single  inac- 
cessible spot  in  the  south-western  peninsula  of  England. 
These  are  clear  evidences  that  they  form  the  last 
stragglers  of  a  vanquished  flora,  not  the  vigorous 
vanguard  of  a  victorious  and  aggressive  race. 

And  now  we  are  in  a  position  fairly  to  settle  the 
problem  where  the  hairy  spurge  and  its  fellows  have 
come  from,  and  how  they  got  here.  People  who 
recognise  the  fact  that  Britain  was  once  joined  to  the 
Continent  are  too  apt  to  fancy  that  it  was  joined  only 
by  a  sort  of  narrow  bridge  between  Dover  and  Calais. 
The  aspect  of  the  shore  on  either  side,  the  high  bluffs 
of  Shakespeare's  Cliff  and  Cap  Grisnez,  the  geological 
continuity  between  the  chalk  and  the  other  formations 
on  the  two  coasts,  all  forcibly  suggest  that  France 
and  England  must  once  have  been  joined  there — 
as,  indeed,  they  undoubtedly  were.  But  we  are  all 
inclined  mentally  to  minimise  the  amount  of  connec- 
tion ;  we  stick  in  an  isthmus  just  sufficient  to  carry 
the  South-Eastern  Railway  across  to  Boulogne,  and 
then  we  are  fully  satisfied  with  our  new  geography. 
In  reality,  however,  the  old  land  connection  was  some- 
thing far   more    complete    and    universal    than    that. 


64  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that,  at  the  close  of 
the  last  glacial  epoch,  Great  Britain  anci  Ireland 
formed  a  part  of  the  Continent,  not  in  the  sense  in 
which  Scandinavia  or  Denmark  still  does,  but  in  the 
sense  in  which  Bavaria  and  Switzerland  still  do.  The 
land  of  Europe  then  stretched  out  to  seaward  far 
beyond  Ireland,  Spain,  and  the  Faroe  Islands  ;  and 
Cork,  Glasgow,  and  Liverpool  then  stood  further 
inland  than  Lyons,  Munich,  and  Geneva  stand  at  the 
present  day. 

Walking  one  morning  a  few  winters  since — just 
after  the  most  terrible  tempest  of  recent  years — on  the 
Parade  at  Hastings,  I  happened  to  notice  a  curiously 
shaped  flint  among  the  shingle  lately  thrown  up  by 
the  great  storm.  The  waves  had  beaten  right  over  the 
sea-wall,  and  scattered  a  litter  of  wrack  and  pebbles 
along  the  w'hole  roadway.  I  stooped  down  and 
picked  up  the  odd-looking  fragment :  to  my  surprise, 
I  found  it  was  a  palaeolithic  implement,  a  rudely 
chipped  flint  knife  of  the  older  stone  age,  the  relic  of 
a  race  compared  with  whom  even  the  builders  of 
Wansdyke  here  were  men  of  yesterday.  This  rude 
flake  was  fashioned  by  the  naked  black- fellows  who 
hunted  the  rhinoceros  and  the  mammoth  in  the 
English  valleys,  before  ever  the  great  ice  age  itself 
had  spread  its  glaciers  over  the  length  and  breadth  of 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         65 

the  land,  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand  years  since. 
Its  outer  surface  was  dulled  and  whitened  by  age,  as 
is  always  the  case  with  these  primaeval  flint  weapons  ; 
but  its  edge  was  still  sharp  and  keen,  though  crusted 
in  places  with  a  hard  film  of  mineral  deposit,  and  also 
blunted  here  and  there  by  use  in  cutting  clubs  and 
reindeer  bones  for  its  savage  possessor.  But  there 
were  no  traces  of  rolling  as  in  water-worn  pebbles  : 
the  knife  was  freshly  disinterred.  It  was  clear  that 
the  storm  had  just  unearthed  it  from  beneath  the  sub- 
merged forest  which  belts  all  the  coast  from  Beachy 
Head  to  Dungeness.  For  the  forest  is  a  post-glacial 
deposit ;  and  it  once  formed  part  of  this  great  connect- 
ing land,  now  buried  beneath  the  Atlantic,  the  English 
Channel,  and  the  German  Ocean.  The  trees  which 
composed  it  still  stand  as  upright  stumps,  firmly 
bedded  in  a  layer  of  tenacious  clay  ;  and  strewn 
beneath  them  lie  prostrate  boles,  in  the  very  place 
where  the  wind  threw  them  down  some  fifty  or  sixty 
thousand  years  ago.  In  the  public  garden  at  Hast- 
ings, one  of  these  huge  balks,  dug  up  on  the  St. 
Leonard's  beach,  has  been  fixed  as  a  curiosity  ;  and, 
though  its  outer  layer  is  charred  and  blackened  by  the 
water,  the  inner  wood  is  still  as  sound  and  as  firm  as 
on  the  day  it  fell.  We  have  to  deal  here  with  a  time 
which  is  marvellously  ancient  indeed   when  measured 


66  Flozvers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


by  our  ordinary  human  and  historical  chronology, 
but  which  is  quite  modern  when  judged  by  the  vast 
timepiece  of  cosmical  and  geological  cycles. 

All  round  the  coast  of  England  you  will  find  end- 
less traces  of  these  submerged  forests,  especially 
wherever  the  land  shelves  off  slowly  to  seaward. 
That  m.ost  lively  of  mediaeval  travellers,  Giraldus 
Cambrensis  (whose  amusing  and  somewhat  slangy 
diary  would  be  much  more  read,  I  am  sure,  if  people 
did  not  incongruously  mistake  him  for  a  dry  chronicler 
of  the  monastic  sort),  gives  a  full  and  really  scientific 
account  of  one  which  he  came  across  in  the  course 
of  his  Welsh  peregrinations  ;  and  ever  since  his  time 
the  submerged  forests  have  been  noted  in  spot  after 
spot  in  every  part  of  Southern  Britain.  Beginning  in 
the  great  bight  between  Wales  and  Scotland,  they 
continue  round  the  coast  at  Holyhead  ;  turn  up  again 
in  Cardigan  Bay  ;  fringe  the  whole  Bristol  Channel  ; 
fill  in  the  bottom  of  the  fiords  at  Falmouth,  Dart- 
mouth, Torquay,  and  Exmouth  ;  trend  round  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  Selsea,  and  Pevensey  Bay  ;  appear  sparingly 
off  the  Essex  coast ;  and  thence  run  up  by  Cromer 
and  the  Wash  to  Holderness  and  Lindisfarne.  They 
are  everywhere  newer  than  the  glacial  deposits,  and 
so  they  give  us  a  fair  ground  for  believing  that  a 
great  general  subsidence  of  the  land  has  taken  place 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         67 

all  round  the  shore  of  England  at  a  comparatively 
recent  period — that  is  to  say,  since  the  close  of  the 
last  glacial  epoch.  How  recent  they  are  is  well  shown 
by  the  nature  of  the  remains  themselves  ;  for  they 
often  contain  undecayed  leaves,  water-logged  hazel- 
nuts, bits  of  small  twigs,  and  other  forestine  rubbish 
of  a  perfectly  undecayed  and  modern-looking  charac- 
ter. Some  of  the  twigs  even  break  with  a  sharp 
crackling  sound,  like  dry  wood  freshly  taken  from  a 
modern  forest. 

The  question  now  remains.  If  the  land  once  thus 
extended  farther  out  to  sea  than  at  present,  how  far 
out  did  it  extend  ?  or,  in  other  words,  how  large  a 
subsidence  has  taken  place?  Here  we  have  an 
excellent  hint  for  our  guidance  in  the  fact  that  Ireland 
must  have  been  united  to  England  since  the  glacial 
epoch,  because  we  find  in  Ireland  a  large  proportion 
of  the  British  plants  and  animals,  including  a  con- 
siderable number  of  land  mammals.  Now,  how  much 
must  we  raise  the  general  land  surface  of  the  British 
Isles  in  order  to  unite  Ireland  to  Great  Britain  ? 
Well,  a  rise  of  less  than  one  hundred  fathoms  would 
suffice  to  join  the  whole  of  our  islands  throughout 
nearly  all  their  length,  leaving  only  two  large  lakes  in 
the  very  deepest  parts  of  the  sea,  where  the  plummet 
marks  a  depth  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  fathoms.     One 


68 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


of  these  two  large  lakes  would  lie  between  Galloway 
and  Ulster,  and  the  other  would  fill  up  the  hollow  of 
the  Minch  between  the  Hebrides  and  the  Isle  of  Skye. 


FRAN   C  E 


Fig.  i6.— Sketch  Map  of  Post-Glacial  Britain. 

But  the  same  amount  of  elevation  would  also  suffice 
to  unite  us  to  the  Continent  from  Denmark  to  Spain, 
as  well  as  to  push  out  our  whole  coast-line  about  fifty 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         69 

miles  to  the  westward  of  Cape  Clear.  Beyond  that 
distance  the  sea-bottom  suddenly  topples  over  from  a 
general  depth  of  a  hundred  fathoms  to  a  depth  of  a 
thousand  fathoms  or  more  ;  which  clearly  shows  that 
this  line,  curving  round  from  Shetland  to  the  Spanish 
shore  of  the  Asturias,  must  mark  an  old  and  long-con- 
tinued prehistoric  land-barrier.  In  other  words,  the 
British  Isles  are  situated  on  a  comparatively  shallow 
submarine  bank,  which  spreads  north,  south,  and  east 
of  them,  but  ends  abruptly  to  the  westward  by  a 
sudden  drop  of  eight  or  nine  hundred  fathoms.  If 
you  were  now  to  raise  this  bank  a  hundred  fathoms  in 
height,  you  would  lift  its  whole  area  above  the  sea- 
level,  save  only  in  the  two  hollows  already  noted  ; 
but  if  you  went  on  raising  it  for  several  hundred 
fathoms  m.ore,  you  would  not  materially  alter  the 
coast-line  established  by  your  first  elevation.  So  we 
can  hardly  doubt  that  the  hundred-fathom  line  really 
represents  the  old  western  boundary  of  Europe 
towards  the  Atlantic,  because  it  coincides  so  nearly  in 
depth  with  the  elevation  necessary  to  unite  England 
and  Ireland  to  one  another,  and  to  the  Continent. 

Only  one  element  of  our  problem  now  remains  to 
be  solved  ;  and  that  is  the  question — When  did  the 
subsidence  take  place  which  turned  the  dry  land  all 
round  Britain  into  the  beds  of  the  English  Channel, 


70  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

the  German  Ocean,  and  the  Irish  Sea  ?  To  this 
question  I  am  deferentially  inclined  to  give  a  some- 
what different  answer  from  that  of  most  of  our 
authorities.  As  a  rule,  it  seems  to  be  implied  that 
the  subsidence  was  a  single  act,  spread  indeed  over  a 
considerable  length  of  time,  but  completed  once  for 
all,  and  never  since  renewed.  It  appears  to  me  more 
probable,  however,  that  the  subsidence  has  been  going 
on  more  or  less  ever  since  the  age  of  the  submerged 
forests,  and  that  it  still  continues  in  places  over  the 
same  area.  Mr.  Wallace  has  already  pointed  out  that 
Ireland  was  probably  separated  from  the  mainland 
sooner  than  England,  because  it  has  fewer  native 
mammals  and  hardly  any  reptiles  or  amphibians. 
The  happy  immunity  from  toads  and  serpents  which 
is  generally  attributed  to  the  pious  exertions  of  St. 
Patrick,  may  perhaps  rather  be  set  down  to  the  early 
isolation  of  Ireland  from  the  mainland  shortly  after 
the  end  of  the  great  ice  age,  and  before  all  the 
members  of  the  new  European  fauna  had  had  time  to 
spread  equally  over  the  more  outlying  portions  of  the 
yet  undivided  continent.  But  there  are  other  indica- 
tions of  subsequent  partial  submergence  elsewhere. 
Many  facts  lead  me  to  the  belief  that  the  Bristol 
Channel  was  still  a  plain  through  which  the  Severn 
flowed  quietly  to  the  sea  long  after  the  final  insulation 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         7 1 

of  Ireland  and  the  Hebrides.  Tourists  driving  from 
Barmouth  to  Port  Madoc  have  looked  down  from  the 
picturesque  escarpment  of  Harlech  Castle  upon  a 
narrow  belt  of  plain  between  the  mountains  and  the 
sea,  and  have  been  told  how  the  Lowland  Hundred 
once  stretched  outward  from  this  point  across  Cardi- 
gan Bay  as  far  as  Sarn  Badrig  or  St.  Patrick's 
Causeway,  a  rocky  reef  which  whitens  the  Channel 
into  a  long  line  of  breakers  in  the  middle  distance. 
Welsh  legends,  immortalised  by  Peacock's  delicious 
satire,  tell  us  how  the  Hundred  was  submerged  by  an 
inundation  ;  and  the  tradition  as  to  this  subsidence  is 
almost  certainly  correct.  There  is  some  ground  for 
believing  that  the  Isle  of  Wight  was  still  united  at 
ebb  tide  to  the  mainland  of  Hampshire  by  a  sandy 
isthmus,  when  the  Romans  built  their  villas  at 
Brading ;  and  we  know  that  even  as  late  as  the  days 
when  Hengest  and  Horsa  launched  their  mythical 
long  ships  for  the  conquest  of  Kent,  the  Zuyder  Zee 
was  yet  undoubtedly  an  inland  lake,  separated  from 
the  German  Ocean  by  a  long  J^elt  of  land  now  almost 
entirely  submerged,  save  in  the  solitary  line  of  islands 
which  preserves  the  outline  of  its  northern  shore. 
Nay,  even  in  our  own  time,  the  southern  part  of 
Sweden  is  slowly  sinking  by  inches  beneath  the  level 
of  the  Baltic.     Hence  I  am  strongly  inclined  to  sus- 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


pect  that  the  submergence  of  this  western  land  was  a 
work  of  time,  and  that  no  particular  date  can  be 
assigned  to  it  as  a  whole. 

Now,  when  a  continuous  belt  of  lowland  stretched 
round  from  Spain  to  Ireland  and  the  Shetlands,  we 
can  easily  understand  that  the  warm  type  of  south 
European  plants  would  run  northward  along  its 
western  shore  as  far  as  the  climatic  conditions  per- 
mitted. But  the  climate  on  all  the  west  coast  of 
northern  Europe  is  exceptionally  mild  and  moist, 
through  the  agency  of  the  Gulf  Stream  and  the  warm 
westerly  breezes  which  blow  across  it.  Hence  it  is 
not  surprising  that  the  Mediterranean  heath,  the 
strawberry  tree,  the  paeoriy,  the  hairy  spurge,  and  all 
the  other  southern  plants  which  I  have  before 
scheduled,  should  have  ranged  all  along  the  Atlantic 
shore  of  Europe,  past  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Asturias, 
up  the  bend  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  west  of  the 
Land's  End,  and  so  onward  to  Kerry  and  Connemara. 
Dr.  James  Geikie  has  recently  shown  good  reasons 
for  believing  that  the  last  glacial  epoch  was  imme- 
diately succeeded  by  a  short  spell — say  a  thousand 
years  or  so — of  very  sunny  and  genial  conditions  in 
northern  Europe  ;  and  while  these  favourable  con- 
ditions lasted  we  can  readily  understand  that  the 
southern  flora    may  even  have  extended  along  the 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         y^ 

sheltered  belt  beneath  the  mountain-ranges  of  Ireland 
and  Scotland  as  far  northward  as  Bute  and  Arran, 
where  some  (gw  of  its  hardier  representatives  are 
actually  still  preserved.  Meanwhile,  the  eastern  level 
slope  of  what  is  now  England,  together  with  Holland 
and  the  intervening  land  which  then  filled  up  the 
basin  of  the  German  Ocean,  must  have  had  an  inland 
continental  climate,  exposed  to  the  full  rigour  of  the 
north-east  winds,  and  unmitigated  by  the  warmth  and 
moisture  now  diffused  over  it  by  the  sea  and  its 
currents.  In  short,  the  condition  of  that  great  table- 
land must  have  been  much  like  the  condition  of 
Central  Russia  at  the  present  day,  aggravated  perhaps 
by  an  extra  elevation  to  some  hundreds  of  feet  above 
its  existing  level.  Here,  then,  the  flora  must  have 
been  of  the  central  European  and  Scandinavian  type  ; 
while  west  of  the  great  central  range  of  England,  the 
trees  and  flowers  must  in  the  main  have  resembled 
those  which  we  now  find  among  the  nooks  of  the 
Apennines  and  the  Genoese  Riviera. 

By-and-by,  however,  the  earth's  crust  began  to 
sink  in  western  Europe,  as  it  is  sinking  now  in  Scania 
and  the  bed  of  the  southern  Baltic.  Slowly  the 
great  Atlantic  plain  disappeared  below  the  waters, 
leaving  only  the  mountain-tops  and  higher  plateaus 

as  islands  above  the  sea-level.     First  the  two  lateral 
6 


74  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

valleys  of  the  old  lake-system  were  flooded,  cutting 
off  Ireland  and  the  western  Hebrides  as  two  large 
and  compact  islands,  considerably  bigger  than  they 
now  remain  at  the  present  day.  Then,  doubtless, 
the  North  Sea  and  the  Channel  were  overflowed, 
leaving  only  a  narrow  neck  of  chalk  downs  as  a 
connecting  link  between  Kent  and  Picardy,  which 
the  waves  gradually  beat  down  and  at  last  destroyed 
The  cliffs  of  Dover  and  Cap  Blancnez,  of  Beachy 
Head  and  Dieppe,  now  mark  its  limits.  Still  the 
Bristol  Channel  remained  an  open  valley,  and  Scilly 
was  united  to  the  Cornish  peninsula.  Next,  Scilly 
and  the  Channel  Islands  went  ;  while  the  Hebrides 
and  the  western  coast  of  Scotland  broke  up  into  a 
number  of  separate  islets,  only  the  granite  crests  of 
the  higher  mountain-ranges  now  overtopping  the 
water  in  long  lines,  while  the  lateral  valleys  became 
the  straits  which  separate  the  various  members  of  the 
different  archipelagos  from  their  nearest  neighbours. 
Any  one  who  has  once  yachted  down  the  broken 
ridge  of  the  Outer  Hebrides  cannot  fail  to  have 
noticed  that  they  seem  but  the  summits  of  a  vast 
sunken  range,  jagged  and  beaten  at  the  outer  edge  by 
the  ceaseless  dash  of  the  Atlantic.  Last  of  all, 
apparently,  went  Anglesey,  Wight,  and  the  coastwise 
eyots,  as  well  as  the  Bristol  Channel.     On  the  pro- 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed.         75 

tected  eastern  shore  of  Britain  generally,  the  low 
slopes  have  survived  well  enough,  and  patches  of 
shingle  and  sand,  like  the  Dogger  Bank,  still  mark 
the  position  of  the  higher  sunken  lands  ;  but  on  the 
west  and  north  the  open  Atlantic  has  eaten  away  all 
but  the  most  sheltered  plains,  and  cut  its  way  at  all 
exposed  points  into  the  heart  of  the  hills,  giving  rise 
to  the  magnificent  cliff  scenery  of  Cornwall,  Kerry, 
and  the  western  Highlands.  If  you  stand  upon  the 
shore  of  Coboe  Bay  in  Guernsey,  and  look  at  low  tide 
across  the  vast  floor  of  jagged  and  water-fretted 
granite  rocks  which  line  its  bottom,  you  will  see  with 
what  force  the  waves  have  wormed  their  way  over  all 
the  lowland  ;  and  they  will  only  halt  when  they  have 
planed  down  the  whole  of  the  island,  as  they  have 
already  planed  down  the  lesser  land  which  once 
stretched  out  to  northward  beyond  the  solitary  pinna- 
cles of  the  Casquets. 

When  all  these  changes  had  taken  place,  the  stray 
members  of  the  southern  flora  in  Cornwall,  Devon, 
Kerry,  and  Connemara  would  find  themselves  quite 
cut  off  from  their  fellows  in  the  Mediterranean,  the 
Pyrenees,  and  the  Asturias,  For  the  water  has  eaten 
away  almost  all  the  plain  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  save 
only  a  comparatively  insignificant  angle  between  the 
Loire,  the  mountains  of  Auvergne,  and  the  roots  of  the 


76  F/o7ucTS  and  their  Pedig7^ees. 

Pyrenees  ;  and  it  has  left  the  high  and  bleak  granite 
moorland  of  Brittany  jutting  out  alone  into  the 
western  sea.  But  Brittany  looks  northward,  and  is 
open  only  to  the  chilliest  winds  ;  while  its  fair  share 
of  the  Gulf  Stream  is  diverted  by  currents  due  to  the 
lay  of  the  land  in  Cornwall.  Moreover,  the  great 
bight  of  Biscay  distracts  and  upsets  the  old  run  of 
the  water,  so  that  the  whole  shore  of  France  from  the 
Garonne  northward  is  really  colder  and  less  equable 
in  temperature  than  Cornwall  and  Kerry,  or  even 
than  the  average  of  our  own  western  and  southern 
coast.  The  Vendee  is  a  chilly  marshland  ;  Bretagne 
Bretonannte  is  a  high  and  wind-swept  heath.  On 
the  other  hand,  our  extreme  south-western  peninsulas 
and  islands  are  bathed  on  every  side  by  the  v/arm 
water  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  and  so  possess  an  unusually 
mild,  damp,  and  equable  climate.  Every  one  has 
heard  of  the  semi-tropical  vegetation  of  oalms  and 
aloes  which  flourishes  in  the  open  air  at  Tresco  Abbey 
in  the  Scilly  Isles.  Here,  then,  we  have  exactly  the 
conditions  under  which  the  southern  plants,  though 
beaten  back  to  the  very  base  of  the  hills,  might  still 
manage  to  keep  up  a  precarious  existence  in  a  few 
scattered  and  sheltered  nooks.  And  that  is  exactly 
what  they  have  done.  Separated  from  all  the  rest  of 
their    kind,  exposed    to    occasional    hard  winters    or 


The  Ro7nance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         'j'j 

heavy  frosts,  and  slowly  dying  out  under  our  very 
eyes,  they  have  yet  left  here  and  there  a  few  isolated 
descendants  to  tell  the  story  of  their  origin  and  their 
failure.  Curiously  enough,  these  little  lingering  colo- 
nies of  Mediterranean  plants  exist  only  on  the  southern 
and  western  slopes,  among  the  cliffs  and  combes  and 
bays  which  face  and  overlook  the  submerged  lands 
whence  their  ancestors  were  driven  by  the  advancing 
sea.  So  oddly  do  they  confine  themselves  to  the 
islands  and  the  most  insular  peninsulas  that  their 
geographical  distribution  almost  looks  like  a  precon- 
certed arrangement. 

Thus  we  may  observe  once  more  that  one  little 
islet  of  the  Bristol  Channel  alone  preserves  the  red 
paeony.  Holyhead  Island  has  half  a  dozen  rare 
species.  Tlie  Jersey  centaury,  Pelisser's  linaria,  and 
several  other  southern  flowers  have  died  out  every- 
where save  in  the  Channel  Islands.  Scilly  shares 
with  them  in  the  sand  bird's  foot.  The  Irish  Arran 
and  other  Irish  islands  have  many  peculiar  species  ; 
and  a  few  southern  types  even  reach  Bute  and  the 
western  Highlands  ;  for,  as  every  one  knows,  Rothesay 
has  a  climate  almost  as  warm  as  Torquay.  So,  too, 
with  the  peninsulas.  The  Lizard,  with  the  most 
equable  temperature  on  the  English  coast,  is  a  perfect 
mine  of  wealth  to  the  botanist.     It  has  three  peculiar 


yS  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

southern  clovers,  and  lots  of  other  rarities.  Penzance, 
at  the  very  horn  of  Cornwall,  has  five  or  six  speciali- 
ties. The  position  of  Kerry  gives  it  a  climate  like 
that  of  Finisterre,  with  the  appropriate  flora.  Wild 
madder  belongs  only  to  a  few  headlands  of  Pem- 
brokeshire, the  Damnonian  peninsula,  and  the  south- 
west of  Ireland.  Torquay,  on  the  promontory  of 
Hope's  Nose,  shares  a  southern  buplever  with  the 
Channel  Islands.  Babbicombe  has  a  species  almost 
to  itself  Corfe  Castle,  in  the  so-called  Isle  of  Pur- 
beck  in  Dorset,  divides  a  Spanish  heather  with  Corn- 
wall and  the  West  of  Ireland.  One  kind  of  rest- 
harrow,  after  getting  up  from  the  Pyrenees  as  far  as 
the  Channel  Islands,  then  positively  takes  a  second 
spring  to  the  Mull  of  Galloway.  As  to  the  number 
of  Mediterranean  plants  which  are  found  in  Britain 
only  in  Devon  and  Cornwall,  or  in  Kerry  and  Conne- 
mara,  or  in  both,  I  spare  you  the  recital  of  them. 
Even  the  more  inland  and  moorland  types,  which 
each  survive  on  one  high  common  alone,  answer  to 
the  same  law  ;  for  they  occur  on  the  warmest  moors, 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  sunniest  south-western 
slopes.  Thus  the  Cheddar  pink  grows  in  a  single 
basking  hollow  heated  by  radiation  from  two  great 
walls  of  limestone  rock  upon  the  western  flanks 
of   Mendip  ;    the  purple  lobelia  loiters  on  a  bright 


The  Romance  of  a  Wayside  Weed,         79 

upland  near  the  warm  valley  of  the  Devonshire  Axe  ; 
the  white  sedum  struggles  on  upon  the  edge  of  Mal- 
vern ;  and  my  hairy  wood-spurge  here  battles  hard 
for  life  on  Claverton  Down,  close  to  the  steaming 
basin  of  the  old  Roman  Thermae  at  Bath. 

And  so  I  end  where  I  began.  My  sermon  has 
led  me  far  afield  ;  but,  like  a  good  preacher,  I  have 
come  back  to  my  text.  I  have  only  touched  lightly 
upon  the  simplest  and  least  technical  proofs  ;  but 
when  the  whole  evidence  is  put  together — as  I  do  not 
pretend  to  put  it  together  off-hand,  sitting  here  cross- 
legged  on  the  edge  of  Wansdyke — there  can  be  very 
little  reasonable  doubt  that  this  is  something  like  the 
way  in  which  the  hairy  wood-spurge  first  found  its 
way  to  the  Prior  Park  Lane.  So  I  have  gathered  my 
little  morsel  tenderly  and  carefully,  not  injuring  the 
little  plant  more  than  I  can  help  by  my  clumsiness  ; 
and  I  hope  all  future  botanisers  will  do  the  same,  in 
order  to  aid  in  preserving  and  handing  down  to  after 
ages  this  interesting  fragment  of  old  English  history, 
kept  green  and  vital  for  us  all  in  the  tiny  blossom  of 
a  wayside  weed. 


8o  Floivers  and  their  Pcdis'rces. 


III. 
STRA  W BERRIES. 

Side  by  side  in  our  English  hedgerows  in  early 
springtime  there  grow  two  sister  plants,  almost  exactly 
alike  in  foliage,  flower,  and  all  other  points  except  the 
fruit,  but  differing  widely  from  one  another  in  that 
solitary,  and  to  us  essential,  particular.  One  of  these 
plants  is  the  wild  strawberry,  the  other  is  the  little 
three  leaved,  white  potentilla.  It  is  not  often  that  a 
parent  species  and  its  more  developed  offspring  sur- 
vive together  in  the  same  district,  but  this  is  almost 
certainly  the  case  with  these  two  small  English  way- 
side flowers.  Indeed,  the  similarity  between  them  is 
so  close  that  even  the  most  unobservant  passers-by 
have  been  greatly  struck  with  it ;  and  the  common 
native  English  name  of  the  white  potentilla — 'barren 
strawberry  ' — bears  witness  to  the  striking  character 
of  the  family  likeness.  Perhaps  one  ought  rather  to 
go  a  step  further,  and  to  say  that,  while  the  most 
unobservant  have  perceived  the  relationship,  only  the 
more  observant  have  ever  discovered  the  distinctness 


Strawberries. 


8t 


of  the  two  plants.  Nothing  is  more  ordinary  than  to 
hear  casual  townsfolk  exclaim  that  though  there  were 
lots  of  strawberry  blossoms  a  little  while  ago  in  such- 
and-such  a  spot,  there  are  no  ripe  strawberries  to  be 


Fig.  17. — The  Wild  Strawberry. 

seen  now  that  the  time  has  come  for  picking  the 
fruit.  In  such  cases,  careful  examination  will  gener- 
ally show  that  the  spot  is  really  covered  by  white 
potentilla  plants,  whose  little  starry  flowers  were 
easily  mistaken  by  the  world  at  large  for  true  straw- 


82  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

berry  blossom.  Though  there  are  some  marked  dis- 
tinctive features  even  in  the  flower,  to  which  I  shall 
presently  recur,  it  is  in  the  fruit  alone  that  the  two 
plants  really  differ  sufficiently  to  attract  the  attention 
of  an  unbotanical  eye.  But  here  the  difference  is  one 
which  touches  humanity  on  a  very  keen  point  indeed, 
for  the  strawberry  blossom  sets  at  last  into  a  sweet 
and  pulpy  berry,  while  the  potentilla  blossom  sets 
only  into  a  small  head  of  dry  and  unpalatable  nutlets. 
How  the  edible  fruit  has  developed  from  the  inedible 
seeds  is  the  question  which  I  propose  briefly  to  in- 
vestigate in  the  present  paper. 

To  get  properly  at  the  ancestry  of  the  strawberry, 
we  ought  first  to  begin  with  the  potentillas  at  large, 
for  a  most  important  part  of  our  evidence  consists  in 
the  fact  that  the  white  potentilla  varies  from  the 
central  type  of  its  race  in  nearly  all  the  same  par- 
ticulars as  the  strawberry  plant.  In  other  words,  we 
have  to  show  that  the  ancestors  of  the  strawberry  had 
already  acquired  most  of  their  existing  peculiarities 
while  they  were  still  white  potentillas,  and  that  they 
have  only  then  varied  so  far  as  to  have  added  to  that 
white  potentilla  type  the  one  extra  peculiarity  of  a 
red  and  juicy  berry.  Our  systematic  botanists,  indeed, 
will  tell  us  that  while  the  one  plant  belongs  to  the 
genus    Potentilla^  the   other   plant    belongs    to    the 


Strawberries,  83 


totally  distinct  genus  Fragaria ;  and  they  imply, 
therefore,  that  the  differences  between  the  real  straw- 
berry and  the  barren  strawberry  are  far  greater  than 
the  differences  between  the  barren  strawberry  and  the 
other  potentillas.  I  hope  in  the  sequel  to  show,  how- 
ever, that  it  would  be  far  easier  to  develop  a  straw- 
berry out  of  a  white  potentilla  than  to  develop  a 
white  potentilla  itself  out  of  any  one  among  its  yellow 
allies  ;  and  therefore  that  the  systematic  classification 
is  a  faulty  one,  and  the  popular  classification  a 
correct  stroke  of  half-unconscious  scientific  intuition. 

The  potentillas  are  a  group  of  very  lowly  and 
primitive  roses,  the  earliest  and  simplest  surviving 
members  of  the  great  and  world-wide  rose  family. 
Our  common  English  cinquefoil  may  be  accepted  as 
a  good  typical  instance  of  the  whole  group.  Cinque- 
foil is  a  pretty  tufted  creeping  plant,  whose  small 
golden  flowers,  like  yellow  roses  in  miniature,  star  the 
waste  grass-plots  by  the  sides  of  lanes  and  highways 
everywhere  in  Britain  during  the  summer  and  autumn 
months.  Its  leaves,  as  the  very  name  denotes,  con- 
sist of  five  separate  spreading  leaflets,  all  springing 
from  a  common  point,  and  radiating  round  it  as  a 
centre  like  the  fingers  of  a  hand.  The  flowers,  as 
usual  in  most  very  simple  and  primitive  plants  are 
bright  golden  yellow,  and  they  closely  resemble  the 


84  Flowers  and  thcii^  Pedigrees, 

equally  early  blossoms  of  the  buttercup,  which  simi- 
larly form  the  starting  point  of  another  great  and 
varied  family.  Originally,  there  is  good  reason  for 
believing,  all  flowers  were  of  this  same  bright  golden 
yellow  hue  ;  and  those  of  them  that  have  since  pro- 
gressed to  other  colours,  under  stress  of  special  insect 
selection,  have  passed  through  regular  gradations  of 
white,  pink,  red,  crimson,  purple,  and  finally  blue. 
Some  flowers  still  remain  at  the  ancestral  yellow 
stage  ;  others  have  got  on  as  far  as  white  or  pink  ; 
yet  others  have  attained  the  stage  of  crimson  or 
purple  ;  and  a  very  few,  the  most  advanced  of  all, 
have  even  reached  the  culminating  glory  of  deep 
blue. 

We  have  several  other  yellow  potentillas  in 
England  besides  the  cinquefoil,  and  some  of  these 
have  varied  a  good  deal  in  foliage  or  other  points 
from  the  central  form.  Nearest  of  all  to  it  stands  the 
small  tormentil,  so  frequent  upon  heaths  or  other 
moors  and  uplands  ;  for  the  main  distinction  between 
them  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  cinquefoil  has  usually 
five  large  petals,  while  the  tormentil  has  usually  only 
four.  This  difference,  however,  is  by  no  means  always 
constant,  for  on  the  one  hand  it  is  easy  to  find  stray 
flowers  of  cinquefoil  with  only  four  petals,  while  on 
the  other  hand  the  first  flower  on  each  stalk  of  tor- 


Strawberries,  85 


mentil  has  only  five.  There  is  an  intermediate  form, 
too,  which  exactly  splits  the  difference  between  the 
two  plants  in  every  respect;  and  one  can  hardly 
doubt  that  tormentil  is  in  reality  only  a  very  slightly 
altered  form  of  cinquefoil,  grown  woodier  and  more 
dwarfish  from  its  peculiar  upland  situation,  and  with 
one  of  its  petals  suppressed  through  gradual  faih.^.re  of 
constitutional  vigour.  The  frequency  with  which  the 
first  flower  on  each  stem  recurs  to  the  original  five- 
petalled  form,  while  the  material  to  spare  remains 
abundant,  is  very  significant  :  the  later  flowers,  as  the 
material  for  their  formation  runs  short,  have  generally 
to  be  content  with  only  four  petals  each. 

More  divergent  types  of  potentilla  than  these  are 
the  forms  which  have  their  leaves  (to  use  the  technical 
term)  pinnately,  not  digitately,  divided— that  is  to  say, 
with  the  separate  leaflets  arranged  along  two  sides  of 
a  central  leaf-stalk  instead  of  radiating  from  a  common 
point ;  and  though  the  white  potentilla  and  the  straw- 
berry belong  rather  to  the  latter  or  digitate  division, 
I  shall  yet  enter  briefly  into  the  nature  of  the  pinnate 
section,  for  the  sake  of  the  light  which  it  throws  by 
analogy  upon  the  evolution  of  our  own  proper  subject, 
Commonest  among  the  potentillas  of  this  divergent 
group  in  northern  Europe  is  the  trailing  silverweed  or 
gooseweed  of  our  English  roadsides,  a  pretty,  long- 


86  Flowci^s  and  their  Pedigrees. 

leaved  plant,  with  a  silvery  underside,  and  bright 
golden  flowers  springing  from  rooted  joints  on  its 
creeping  runners.  A  rarer  plant  is  the  shrubby 
potentilla,  which  grows  in  bushy  or  stony  places, 
especially  on  mountain  sides,  and  has  accommodated 
itself  to  its  special  situation  by  acquiring  a  stout 
woody  stem.  This  species  also  has  a  yellow  flower. 
But  there  are  two  other  pinnate-leaved  English 
potentillas  whose  blossoms  have  long  since  changed 
colour  under  the  selective  influence  of  their  insect 
fertilisers.  One  of  these  is  the  marshy  comarum,  a 
perennial  which  grows  in  peaty  or  boggy  places,  and 
has  assumed  a  dingy  purplish-yellow  hue,  to  suit  the 
eyes  of  marshland  insects.  It  is  very  noticeable  that 
waterside  flies  do  not  seem  to  care  for  yellow,  and 
most  waterside  flowers  are  therefore  pinkish,  purplish, 
or  white.  Thus  the  water-crowfoot  and  the  mud- 
haunting  ivy-leaved  crowfoot  have  become  white, 
while  all  our  other  native  buttercups  remain  yellow. 
In  the  group  of  bennets  or  Geums^  closely  allied  to 
the  potentillas,  we  find  a  still  closer  analogy,  for  the 
roadside  herb-bennet  or  common  avens  is  yellow  like 
cinquefoil,  but  the  marshy  water-avens  has  exactly  the 
same  dusky  purplish-yellow  tint  as  the  marshy  coma- 
rum.  The  other  pinnate  English  potentilla,  found 
wild  with  us  only  among  the  clefts  of  the  Breiddin 


Strazvbei^ries.  87 


Hills  in  Montgomeryshire,  is  a  mountain  species  with 
handsome  and  conspicuous  white  blossoms  ;  and  this 
also  is  in  striking  analogy  with  similar  facts  elsewhere, 
for  mountain  species  usually  rise  higher  than  their 
neighbours  in  the  scale  of  colour,  owing  to  the  keen 
competition  between  the  flowers  for  the  visits  of  those 
rare  fertilisers,  the  butterflies,  which  sail  further  up 
mountain  heights  than  the  bees  and  other  meadow 
honeysuckers.  For  example,  some  Alpine  buttercups 
are  snowy- white,  while  most  of  their  lowland  congeners 
are  simply  yellow. 

With  the  side  light  thus  cast  upon  our  subject  by 
the  analogy  of  the  pinnate  potentillas,  let  us  hark 
back  to  the  digitate  cinquefoil  once  more,  and  ask  by 
what  steps  some  such  early  ancestral  form  gave  origin 
to  the  common  predecessor  of  the  true  strawberry  and 
its  barren  sister.  The  cinquefoil,  we  saw,  had  five  leaf- 
lets to  each  leaf,  but  the  strawberry  and  the  white 
potentilla  have  three  only.  This  is  one  of  the  marked 
points  wherein  these  two  plants  differ  from  the  other 
potentillas,  and  agree  with  one  another.  But  though 
the  trefoil  leaf  is  a  matter  of  some  importance,  as 
indicating  community  of  origin,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
understand  how  it  has  been  developed  from  the  primi- 
tive cinquefoil.  The  exact  number  of  leaflets  in  a  leaf 
is   always   rather  variable,  depending  partly  on    the 


SS  Flowers  and  theij'  Pedigrees. 


mode  of  growth  of  the  plant,  and  partly  on  the 
amount  of  available  material.  Thus,  in  the  allied 
tormentil  the  lower  leaves  have  five  leaflets,  but  the 
upper  ones  have  usually  three  only.  In  the  spring 
potentilla,  a  rare  English  species,  the  lower  leaves 
have  seven  or  five,  and  the  upper  ones  five  or  three. 
Again,  where  a  species  creeps  along  the  ground,  it  is 
apt  to  have  long  pinnate  leaves  with  many  leaflets,  as 
happens,  for  example,  with  silverweed  and  many 
similar  plants.  But  where  the  leaves  grow  habitually 
among  tall  -grass  or  choking  wayside  weeds,  the 
number  of  leaflets  is  very  apt  to  be  reduced  to  three, 
as  happens,  for  example,  with  clover  and  lotus  among 
the  peaflower  tribe,  and  with  wood-sorrel  among  the 
geranium  tribe,  many  of  whose  allies  have  long  pin- 
nate leaves  with  numerous  leaflets.  Now,  the  straw- 
berry and  the  barren  strawberry  differ  conspicuously 
in  habitat  from  the  other  potentillas  in  the  fact  that 
they  grow  mainly  among  grass,  on  banks,  or  in  hedge- 
row thickets.  Hence  it  suits  them  best  to  raise  their 
trefoil  leaves  on  tall  stalks  above  the  neighbouring 
herbage,  and  thus  to  get  at  the  light  and  air  which 
they  require  for  their  proper  growth.  Natural  selec- 
tion has  easily  brought  about  this  result,  because  in 
such  situations  those  potentillas  which  raised  their 
leaves  highest  would  best  survive,  while  those  which 


Strawbe7^ries.  89 


trailed  or  crept  closely  along  the  ground  would  soon 
be  starved  out  for  want  of  carbonic  acid  (the  raw 
material  of  growth)  by  their  surrounding  competitors. 
In  another  direction  the  ancestors  of  the  straw- 
berry and  of  the  barren  strawberry  also  diverged  from 
their  cinquefoil  predecessors,  and  that  was  in  the 
peculiar  colour  of  their  flowers.  For  some  reason 
rather  difficult  to  decide,  the  petals  have  changed 
from  yellow  to  white.     Difficult  to  decide,  I  say,  be- 


FiG.  18.  Fig.  19. 

Flower  of  Wild  Strawberry.  Flower  of  White  Potentilla. 

cause  we  do  not  exactly  know  what  are  the  insects 
which  the  strawberries  set  themselves  out  especially  to 
please  or  what  is  the  peculiar  nature  of  their  specific 
taste.  But,  as  a  rule,  this  change  from  yellow  to  white 
petals  is  an  ordinary  concomitant  of  higher  develop- 
ment, and  it  probably  accompanies  some  change  in 
the  insects  to  which  fertilisation  is  generally  due. 
Our  own  native  species  have  got  no  further  in  the 
upward  course  of  development  than  white ;  but  two 


90 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


allied  East  Indian  forms  with  digitate  leaves,  cultiv- 
ated in  our  flower-gardens,  the  Nepaul  potentilla  and 
the  purple  potentilla,  have  risen  as  far  in  the  scale  of 
coloration  as  crimson  and  deep  red. 

One  may  sum  up  the  common  points  of  the 
strawberry  and  the  barren  strawberry  somewhat  as 
follows  :  Both  have  tall  leaves  of  three  leaflets,  raised 
on  an  elevated  leaf-stalk,  whereas  most  of  their  other 
congeners    have   many   leaflets.      Both   have    white 


Fig.  20. 
Fruit  of  Wild  Strawberry. 


Fig.  21. 
Fruit  of  White  Potentilla. 


flowers,  whereas  most  of  their  other  congeners  have 
them  yellow.  Both  have  short  tufted  stems  ;  in  both 
the  leaves  are  clothed  with  silky  down  ;  and  in  both 
the  leaflets  are  regularly  toothed  at  the  edge  in  the 
self-same  manner.  On  the  other  hand,  they  differ 
from  one  another  almost  exclusively  in  the  matter  of 
their  fruit.  Now,  as  we  shall  proceed  to  see,  it  is  com- 
paratively easy  to  produce  the  change  whereby  a  dry 
fruit  becomes  a  succulent  one,  and  it  is  also  compara- 


Strawberries.  9 1 


tively  easy  to  produce  any  one  single  change  unac- 
companied by  others  ;  but  it  is  comparatively  difficult 
to  produce  the  whole  set  of  changes  whereby  the  two 
strawberries  differ  alike  from  all  their  congeners.  So, 
if  we  are  going  to  make  a  niew  genus,  Fragaria,  with 
a  Latin  name  at  all,  we  ought  to  make  it  include  both 
the  true  strawberry  and  the  barren  strawberry,  while 
we  relegate  to  the  genus  Potentilla  all  the  other  less 
closely  related  kinds.  But  perhaps  we  shall  do  better 
if  we  lump  them  all  together  in  a  single  genus,  con- 
sidering that,  after  all,  the  barren  strawberry  does  not 
differ  more  from  the  remainder  of  the  potentillas  than 
many  of  these  differ  from  one  another  among  them- 
selves. 

And  now,  how  did  the  edible  strawberry  get 
developed  from  its  barren  ally  ?  Well,  if  we  take  the 
fruit  of  any  potentilla,  we  shall  find  that  it  consists  of 
several  small,  dry,  one-seeded  nuts,  so  tiny  that  they 
look  themselves  like  seeds,  crowded  on  a  thick  recep- 
tacle or  flower  stalk,  without  any  signs  of  redness  or 
succulence.  In  some  potentillas,  however,  as  the  fruit 
ripens,  this  receptacle  becomes  a  little  spongy,  some- 
thing like  the  hull  of  a  raspberry,  only  without  its  pulpy 
character.  It  is  a  common  tendency  of  fruits  to  de- 
velop such  pulpiness,  and  sometimes  they  do  so  quite 
suddenly  by  apparently  spontaneous  variation,  as  when 


92  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

an  almond  tree  has  been  known  to  produce  peach-like 
fruits.  But  no  fruit  will  permanently  acquire  such  a 
succulent  character  unless  it  derives  some  benefit  by 
doing  so  :  the  change,  once  set  up,  will  only  be  per- 
petuated by  natural  selection  if  it  proves  of  advantage 
to  the  plants  which  happen  to  display  it.  Has  it  done 
so  in  the  case  of  the  strawberry  ? 

A  strawberry,  as  we  all  know,  consists  of  a  swollen 
red  receptacle  or  end  of  the  flower-stalk,  dotted  over 
with  little  seed-like  nuts,  which  answer  to  the  tiny  dry 
fruits  of  the  potentilla.  Suppose  any  ancestral  poten- 
tilla  ever  to  have  shown  any  marked  tendency  towards 
fleshiness  in  the  berry,  what  would  happen  ?  It 
would  probably  be  eaten  by  small  hedgerow  birds, 
who  would  swallow  and  digest  the  pulp,  but  would 
not  digest  the  seed-like  nuts  embedded  in  its  midst. 
Hence  the  nuts  would  get  carried  about  from  place  to 
place  and  dropped  by  the  birds  in  hedgerows  or  woods, 
under  circumstances  admirably  adapted  for  their 
proper  germination.  Supposing  this  to  happen  often, 
the  juiciest  berries  would  get  most  frequently  eaten, 
and  so  would  produce  hearty  young  plants  oftener 
than  those  among  their  neighbours  which  simpl}^ 
trusted  to  dropping  off  casually  among  the  herbage. 
Again,  the  birds  like  sweetness  as  well  as  pulpiness, 
and  those   berries   which   grew  most  full    of  sugary 


Sti^a  wherries.  g  3 


juices  would  be  most  likely  to  attract  their  attention. 
Once  more,  the  brightest-coloured  fruits  would  be 
most  easily  seen  among  the  tall  foliage  of  the  hedge- 
rows, and  so  those  berries  which  showed  any  tendency 
towards  redness  of  flesh  would  be  sure  to  gain  a  point 
in  attractiveness  over  their  greener  rivals.  Thus  at 
last  the  strawberry  has  grown  into  the  fruit  that  we 
know  so  well,  by  constant  unconscious  selection  of 
the  little  hedgerow  birds,  exerted  at  once  in  favour  of 
the  pulpiest,  the  sweetest,  and  the  ruddiest  berries. 

It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  in  all  these  particulars 
what  happens  to  the  strawberry  happens  also  in  a 
hundred  other  independent  cases.  Wherever  animals 
are  to  be  enticed  by  plants,  sugar  is  sure  to  be  de- 
veloped to  entice  them.  It  is  so  developed  in  the 
honey  of  flowers,  in  the  extra-floral  nectaries  used  for 
attracting  ants,  and  in  the  sweet  secretion  by  which 
the  pitcher  plants  allure  flies  into  their  murderous 
vessels.  So,  too,  bright  colour  is  commonly  employed 
to  advertise  the  sweet  material,  as  in  the  petals  of 
flowers,  the  skin  of  fruits,  and  the  pink  or  purple 
patches  on  the  lips  of  the  pitcher  plants.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  particular  way  in  which  these  allure- 
ments are  displayed  by  the  strawberry  is  very  dif- 
ferent from  that  adopted  by  almost  all  other  fruits. 
In  the    closely   allied    raspberry,   the    pulpiness   and 


94  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

colour  are  produced  in  the  outer  coat  of  the  Httle  nut- 
lets themselves,  and  the  receptacle  assumes  the  form 
of  the  hull,  which  we  pull  out  of  the  fruit  and  throw 
away.  In  the  plum,  there  is  only  one  such  berry, 
inclosing  a  single  seed.  But  in  the  strawberry,  the 
separate  fruits  remain  always  hard  and  dry,  and  it  is 
only  the  receptacle  which  holds  them  that  swells  out 
into  the  bright-coloured  and  juicy  edible  portion. 

It  very  seldom  happens,  however,  that  a  plant 
which  has  diverged  from  another  in  one  point  remains 
constant  in  all  other  points.  In  the  strawberry  this 
is  almost  the  case,  for  it  hardly  differs  at  all  in  any 
particular,  save  its  fruit,  from  its  ancestor,  the  white 
potentilla  ;  and  that  is  good  evidence,  it  seems  to  me, 
that  the  two  plants  cannot  very  long  have  separated 
from  one  another.  Yet  even  here  there  are  a  few 
inconspicuous  lateral  differences.  Most  notable  of 
these  are  the  variations  in  the  flower.  Though  to  a 
casual  observer  the  two  blossoms  look  almost  identical, 
and  the  plants  can  only  readily  be  identified  when  in 
fruit,  a  botanical  eye  has  never  any  difficulty  in  dis- 
tinguishing the  one  from  the  other.  The  petals  of  the 
barren  strawberry  are  usually  short  and  narrow,  the 
flowers  scarcely  open  into  more  than  a  cup  shape, 
and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  yellowish  or  reddish 
colour   about   the   receptacle   and    the   base   of   the 


strawberries.  95 


stamens.  In  the  true  wild  strawberry,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  petals  are  usually  larger,  rounder,  and  purer 
white,  the  flowers  open  into  a  wide  saucer  shape,  and 
there  is  no  yellow  or  red  in  the  centre  of  the  blossom. 
Perhaps  one  may  best  account  for  these  changes  by 
supposing  that  the  true  strawberry  has  still  further  pro- 
gressed in  insect  fertilisation.  This  would  sufficiently 
explain  the  purer  white  of  the  petals  and  the  loss  of 
such  relics  of  the  primitive  yellow  hue  as  still  re- 
mained in  the  barren  strawberry.  But  it  is  also  pro- 
bable, I  think,  that  the  barren  strawberries  represent 
the  remnants  of  the  old  ancestral  race  which  have 
not  yet  been  lived  down  by  the  newer  strawberry 
type,  but  which  are  gradually  undergoing  progressive 
degradation  ;  hence  their  half-opened  flowers — often 
self- fertilised — their  smaller  and  degenerate  petals, 
and  their  general  unattractiveness  of  outward  appear- 
ance. It  is  difficult  to  compare  the  blossom  of  a  true 
wild  strawberry  with  that  of  a  barren  strawberry  with- 
out immediately  catching  the  obvious  suggestion  that 
the  one  is  going  upward  towards  higher  development 
and  the  other  downward  towards  general  degeneracy. 
In  some  other  respects  the  strawberry  plant 
equally  shows  itself  the  nobler  species  of  the  two. 
Its  leaves  are  usually  larger  and  more  erect,  its  stem 
taller   and   straighter,    its    root-stock  less   fluffy  and 


96  Flowers  and  their  Pedig7^ees. 

not  so  creeping.  Moreover,  if  it  really  descended 
from  the  white  potentilla,  or  from  some  closely  allied 
common  ancestor,  it  has  certainly  far  outstripped  ity 
progenitor  in  the  race  for  the  possession  of  the 
world,  for  the  white  potentilla,  or  barren  strawberry, 
is  apparently  a  strictly  European  species,  found  from 
Sweden  and  Ireland  to  the  Crimea  and  the  Caucasus, 
but  the  true  strawberry  is  a  much  more  cosmopolitan 
plant,  being  found  in  almost  all  the  temperate  regions 
of  the  world,  from  Siberia  and  Scotland  to  Van- 
couver's Land,  and  from  the  Arctic  Regions  to  the 
Andes  of  Chili.  This  is  quite  what  one  would  expect 
under  the  circumstances  ;  for  while  the  seed-like  fruits 
of  the  white  potentilla  could  only  fall  on  the  ground 
close  to  the  mother  plant,  and  so  could  disperse 
themselves  very  slowly  over  a  single  continent,  the 
little  nuts  of  the  strawberry  could  be  carried  by  birds 
from  land  to  land,  across  the  severing  ocean  or  the 
intervening  tropical  region.  Thus  the  old  degenerate 
type  is  now  apparently  dying  out  in  northern  and 
western  Europe  ;  but  the  progressive  and  advancing 
strawberry  is  making  its  way  steadily,  like  a  colon- 
ising race,  round  the  entire  girdle  of  the  two  tem- 
perate regions. 

The  strawberries    are,   as  yet,  it   would    seem,  a 
relatively  new  race,  and   so  they  have  not,  so   far, 


Strawberries. 


97 


split  up  into  any  very  marked  or  distinctive  separate 
species.  Still  they  have  even  now  assumed  several 
minor  forms,  worthy  at  least  to  be  distinguished  as 
nameable  varieties.  The  most  divergent  of  these,  as 
might  be  expected,  is  the  Chilian  pine  strawberry,  for 
in  the  southern  hemisphere  the  imported  strawberry, 
carried  over  at  first,  no  doubt,  by  some  weather- 
driven  bird,  has  found  itself  in  the  midst  of  a  very 
different  environment  from  that  which  surrounds  it  in 
the  hedgerows  and  meadows  of  its  European  home  : 
and  to  this  environment  it  has  had  to  adapt  itself  in 
several  minor  but  obvious  particulars.  An  almost 
equally  distinct  variety  is  the  white  Alpine  straw- 
berry, which  has  quite  lost  the  native  blushing  rud- 
diness of  the  lowland  fruit.  Curiously  different  in 
another  way  is  the  hautboy,  a  taller  plant,  with  fewer 
and  larger  blossoms  and  a  richer  flavour,  chiefly  dis- 
tinguished by  the  separation  of  its  sexes  on  distinct 
plants,  for  here  the  stamens  grow  on  one  vine,  and  the 
pistils,  or  embryo  fruits,  on  another.  In  order  to 
make  the  berries  swell  and  ripen,  it  is  necessary  to 
plant  both  sorts  together,  and  then  the  fertilising 
insects  unconsciously  carry  the  pollen  from  the  stamin- 
ate  flowers  to  the  sensitive  surface  of  their  pistillate 
neighbours,  and  so  assist  the  efforts  of  the  gardener 
in  setting  the  fruit.     In  the  great  American  market 


98  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


gardens  it  is  usual  to  plant  one  row  of  '  barren ' 
flowers  for  every  three  rows  of  '  fertile  '  ones,  leaving 
the  insects  to  do  the  rest.  At  present  none  of  these 
varieties  can  be  said  to  have  developed  into  what  old- 
fashioned  botanists  used  to  call  '  a  good  species/  for 
fertile  cross-breeds  can  still  be  readily  produced 
between  them  all  by  artificially  fertilising  the  pistils 
of  one  sort  with  pollen  taken  on  a  camel's-hair  brush 
from  the  stamens  of  another.  The  possibility  of 
fertile  hybridisation  in  such  a  manner  shows  that  the 
plants  have  not  long  diverged  from  the  common 
central  stock.  But  after  they  have  long  been  exposed 
to  varying  circumstances  and  acted  upon  by  natural 
selection,  they  will  probably  become  so  different  from 
one  another  in  a  variety  of  small  particulars  that  the 
hybrids  will  no  longer  prove  fertile,  owing  to  the  want 
of  sufficient  similarity  between  the  respective  ancestral 
lines.  Perfect  fertility  is  only  possible  between  indi- 
viduals which  still  retain  all  the  principal  traits  of  a 
common  ancestral  form.  Curiously  enough,  one  ex- 
isting variety,  the  Himalayan  strawberry,  has  actually 
reverted  to  the  primitive  yellow  flowers  of  its  cinquefoil 
allies. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  strawberries  ever  really 
live  down  the  white  potentillas,  so  that  the  latter  race 
dies  out  altogether,  then   the  distance  between  the 


Strawberries.  99 


genus  Fragaria  and  the  genus  Potentilla  will  be  far 
greater  than  it  is  at  the  present  day.  We  are  lucky- 
enough  at  this  moment  to  be  able  to  trace  the  close 
connection  between  one  rather  abnormal  potentilla 
(the  barren  strawberry)  and  the  true  strawberry  itself. 
But  if  the  barren  strawberry  and  the  Himalayan  kind 
were  to  disappear  we  should  have  no  link  between 
the  yellow-flowered,  five-leaved,  dry-fruited  cinquefoil 
and  the  white-flowered,  three-leaved,  succulent-fruited 
strawberry.  In  nature,  as  it  now  stands,  the  *  missing 
link '  is  fortunately  not  yet  missing.  Though  still 
essentially  a  potentilla  in  all  important  points,  it  yet 
approaches  so  nearly  to  the  true  strawberry  that  only 
rather  close  observation  enables  us  to  perceive  their 
differences  in  certain  stages  of  their  existence.  What 
thus  happens  now  with  the  strawberry  has  doubtless 
happened  at  one  time  or  another  with  every  new 
species  of  plant  or  animal  ;  but  the  special  interest 
of  this  case  consists  in  the  fact  that  here,  in  all  pro- 
bability, we  still  have  the  parent  type  living  on  in  a 
degraded  form  side  by  side  with  its  more  advanced 
and  developed  descendant. 


lOO  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


IV. 

CLEA  VERS} 

Sitting  here  on  the  gate  that  leads  Into  the  Fore  Acre, 
I  have  just  disentangled  from  my  nether  integuments  a 
long  trailing  spray  of  clinging  goose-grass,  which  has 
fastened  itself  to  my  legs  by  the  innumerable  little 
prickly  hooks  that  line  the  angles  of  its  four-cornered 
stem.  It  is  well  forward  for  the  time  of  year,  thanks 
to  our  wonderfully  mild  and  genial  winter  ;  for  it  is 
already  thickly  covered  with  its  tiny  white  star-shaped 
flowers,  which  have  even  set  here  and  there  into  the 
final  mature  stage  of  small  burr-like  fruits.  Goose- 
grass,  or  cleavers,  as  we  ordinarily  call  it,  is  one  of  the 
very  commonest  among  English  weeds,  and  yet  I 
dare  say  you  never  even  heard  its  name  till  I  told  it 
to  you  just  now  ;  for  it  is  an  inconspicuous,  petty 
sort  of  plant,  which  would  never  gain  any  attention 
at  all  if  it  were  not  for  its  rough  clinging  leaves,  that 
catch  one's  fingers  slightly  when  drawn  through  them, 

'  A  lecture  delivered  at  the  London  Institution,  Finsbury  Circus. 


/ 


C leaver's. 


lOI 


and  often  obtrude  themselves  casually  upon  one's 
notice  by  looping  themselves  in  graceful  festoons 
about  one's  person.  Now  I  am  glad  to  have  got  you 
button-holed  here  upon  the  gate,  because  I  can  tell 
you  all  about  the  goose-grass  as  we  sit  on  the  top  bar 


Fig.  22.— Goose-grass  or  Cleavers. 

without  risk  of  interruption  ;  and  I  dare  say  you  will 
be  quite  surprised  to  learn  that  a  very  interesting  and 
historical  plant  it  is  after  all,  in  spite  of  its  uninviting 
external  aspect.  You  will  find  that  its  prickly  leaves 
its  square  stem,  its  white   flowers,  and   its   odd  little 


T02  Flowers  and  their  Pectigj^ees. 

fruit  all  tell  us  some  curious  incident  in  its  past  evolu- 
tion, and  are  full  of  suggestiveness  as  to  the  general 
course  of  plant  development.  Here  is  our  weed  in 
abundance,  growing  all  along  the  hedgerow  by  our 
side,  and  clambering  for  yards  from  its  root  over  all 
the  bushes  and  shrubs  in  the  thicket.  Pick  a  piece 
for  yourself  before  I  begin,  and  then  you  can  follow 
my  preaching  at  your  leisure,  with  the  text  always 
open  before  you  for  reference  and  verification. 

Of  course  goose-grass  had  not  always  all  its  pre- 
sent marked  peculiarities.  Like  every  other  living 
thing,  it  has  acquired  its  existing  shape  by  slow 
modification  from  a  thousand  widely  different  ances- 
tral forms.  One  of  the  best  ways  to  discover  certain 
lost  links  in  the  pedigree  of  plants  or  animals  is  to 
watch  the  development  of  an  individual  specimen 
from  the  seed  or  the  ^^g  ;  for  the  individual,  we  have 
all  often  been  told,  to  some  extent  recapitulates  in  itself 
the  whole  past  history  of  its  race.  Thus  the  cater- 
pillar shows  us  an  early  ancestral  form  of  the  butter- 
fly, while  it  was  still  a  wingless  grub  ;  and  the  tadpole 
shows  us  an  early  ancestral  form  of  the  frog,  while  it  was 
still  a  limbless  mud  fish.  So,  too,  the  chick  hatching 
within  the  shell  goes  through  stages  analogous  to 
those  of  the  fish,  the  amphibian,  the  reptile,  and  the 
bird  successively.     In  just  the  same  way  young  plants 


Cleavers.  103 


pass  through  a  first  simple  shape  which  helps  us  to 
picture  to  ourselves  what  they  once  were— what,  for 
example,  the  ancestors  of  the  goose-grass  looked  like, 
long  before  they  were  goose-grasses  at  all.  Now  here 
in  my  hand  I  have  got  a  young  speci- 
men in  its  very  earliest  stage,  which 
closely  reproduces  the  primitive  type 
of  its  first  progenitors,  a  million  ages 
since.  Goose-grass  is  an  annual  weed  : 
it  dies  down  utterly  every  autumn, 
and  only  reproduces  itself  by  seed 
in  the  succeeding  spring  ;  but  this 
year  the  weather  has  been  so  excep- 
tionally warm  and  summerlike  that  ^^^  ^ 

thousands      of     young      plants      have     Seedling  of  cleavers. 

sprouted  from  the  seed  ever  since  Christmas  ;  and 
among  them  is  the  specimen  which  I  have  just 
picked,  and  which  you  may  have  for  examination  if 
you  will  take  the  trouble.  Look  into  it,  and  you 
will  see  that  its  two  first  leaves  are  quite  unlike 
the  upper  ones — a  phenomenon  which  frequently 
occurs  in  seedling  plants,  and  with  which  you  are 
probably  familiar  in  the  case  of  the  pea  and  of  the 
garden  bean.  But  this  difference  is  always  a  differ- 
ence in  one  direction  only  ;  the  first  leaves  which 
come  out  of  the  seed  are  invariably  simpler  in  shape 


I04  Floiucrs  and  their  Pedigrees. 

and  type  than  all  the  other  leaves  which  come  after 
them.  In  the  language  of  science  they  are  less 
specialised  ;  they  represent  an  earlier  and  undevel- 
oped form  of  leaf — nature's  rough  sketch,  so  to  speak, 
while  the  later  foliage  represents  the  final  improve- 
ments introduced  with  time,  and  perfected  by  the 
action  of  natural  selection. 

These  large  oval  leaves  which  you  see  in  the 
seedling  are  mere  general  models  or  central  ideas  of 
what  a  leaf  should  be  ;  they  are  quite  unadapted  to 
any  one  special  or  definite  situation.  They  are  not 
divided  into  many  little  separate  leaflets,  or  prolonged 
into  points  and  angles,  or  gracefully  vandyked  round 
the  edges,  or  beautifully  cut  out  into  lacelike  patterns, 
or  armed  at  every  rib  with  stout  defensive  prickles, 
like  many  other  leaves  that  you  know  familiarly. 
Their  outline  is  quite  simple  and  unbroken  ;  they 
preserve  for  us  still  the  extremely  plain  ancestral 
form  from  which  such  different  leaves  as  those  of  the 
horse-chestnut,  the  oak,  the  clover,  the  milfoil,  the 
parsley,  and  the  holly  are  ultimately  derived.  An 
expanded  oval,  something  like  this,  is  the  prime 
original,  the  central  point  from  which  every  variety  of 
foliage  first  set  out,  and  from  which  they  have  all 
diverged  in  various  directions,  according  as  different 
circumstances  favoured  or  checked  their  development 


Cleavers.  105 


in  this,  that,  or  the  other  particular.  Just  as  a  single 
little  cartilaginous  mud-haunter— a  blind  and  skulking 
small  creature,  something  like  a  lancelet,  something 
like  a  tadpole,  and  something  like  the  famous  ascidian 
larva — has  gradually  evolved,  through  diverse  lines, 
all  the  existing  races  of  beasts,  birds,  reptiles,  and 
fishes,  so  too  a  single  little  primaeval  plant,  something 
like  these  two  lowest  leaves  of  the  goose-grass,  has 
gradually  evolved  all  the  oaks  and  elms  and  ashes  ; 
all  the  roses,  and  geraniums,  and  carnations  ;  all  the 
cabbages,  and  melons,  and  apples,  which  we  see  in 
the  world  around  us  at  the  present  day.  And,  again, 
just  as  the  larval  form  of  the  ascidian  and  of  the  frog 
still  preserves  for  us  a  general  idea  of  that  earliest 
ancestral  vertebrate,  so  too  these  larval  leaves  of  the 
goose-grass,  if  I  may  venture  so  to  describe  them, 
still  preserve  for  us  a  general  idea  of  that  earliest 
dicotyledonous  plant. 

Dicotyledonous  is  a  very  ugly  word,  and  I  shall 
not  stop  now  to  explain  it  from  the  top  of  a  five- 
barred  gate.  It  must  suffice  if  I  tell  you  confidenti- 
ally that  the  little  plant  we  have  ideally  reconstructed 
was  the  first  ancestor  of  almost  all  the  forest  trees, 
and  of  all  the  best  known  English  herbs  and  flowers  ; 
but  not  of  the  lilies,  the  grasses,  and  the  cereal 
kinds,  which  belong  to  the   opposite  or  monocotyle- 


io6  Flowers  and  tJieir  Pedigrees. 


donous  division  oi  flowering-  plants.  When  this  sprig 
of  goose-grass  first  appeared  above  the  ground,  it  pro- 
bably represented  that  typical  ancestor  almost  to  the 
life  ;  for  it  had  then  only  the  two  rounded  leaves  you 
see  at  its  base,  and  none  of  these  six-rowed  upper 
whorls,  which  are  so  strikingly  different  from  them. 
Now,  how  did  the  upper  whorls  get  there  ?  Why,  of 
course  they  grew,  you  say.  Yes,  no  doubt,  but  what 
made  them  grow  1  Well,  the  first  pair  of  leaves  grew 
out  of  the  seed,  where  the  mother  plant  had  laid  by  a 
little  store  of  albumen  on  purpose  to  feed  them,  exactly 
as  a  reserve  of  food  materials  is  laid  by  in  the  ^g^ 
of  a  hen  to  feed  the  growing  chick.  Under  the 
influence  of  heat  and  moisture  the  seed  began  to 
germinate,  as  we  call  it— that  is  to  say,  oxygen  began 
to  combine  with  its  food  stuffs,  and  motion  or  sprout- 
ing was  the  natural  result.  This  motion  takes  in  each 
plant  a  determinate  course,  dependent  upon  the  inti- 
mate molecular  structure  of  the  seed  itself ;  and  so 
each  seed  reproduces  a  plant  exactly  like  the  parent, 
bar  those  small  individual  variations  which  are  the 
ultimate  basis  of  new  species — the  groundwork  upon 
which  natural  selection  incessantly  works.  In  the  case 
of  this  goose-grass  seed  the  first  thing  to  appear  was 
the  pair  of  little  oval  leaves  ;  and,  as  the  small  store  of 
albumen  laid  by  in  the  seed   was   all  used  up  in   pro- 


Cleavers.  107 

ducing  them,  they  had  to  set  to  work  at  once  manu- 
facturing new  organic  material  for  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  plant.  Luckily  they  happened  to 
grow  in  a  position  where  the  sunlight  could  fall  upon 
them— a  good  many  seedlings  are  more  unfortunate, 
and  so  starve  to  death  at  the  very  outset  of  their 
careers — and  by  the  aid  of  the  light  they  immediately 
began  decomposing  the  carbonic  acid  of  the  air  and 
laying  by  starch  for  the  use  of  the  younger  generation 
of  leaves.  At  the  same  time  the  vigorous  young  sap 
carried  these  fresh  materials  of  growth  into  the  tiny 
sprouting  bud  which  lay  between  them,  and  rapidly 
unfolded  it  into  such  a  shoot  as  you  see  now  before 
you,  with  level  whorls  of  quite  differently  shaped  and 
highly  developed  leaves,  disposed  in  rows  of  six  or 
eight  around  the  stem. 

Observe  that  the  adult  type  of  leaf  appears  here 
suddenly  and  as  it  were  by  a  leap.  If  we  could 
reconstruct  the  whole  past  history  of  the  goose-grass, 
we  should  doubtless  find  that  each  change  in  its 
foliage  took  place  very  gradually,  by  a  thousand 
minute  intermediate  stages.  Indeed,  many  of  these 
stages  still  survive  for  us  among  allied  plants.  But 
the  impulsive  goose-grass  itself  clears  the  whole  dis- 
tance between  the  primitive  ancestor  and  its  own 
advanced  type  at  a  single  bound.     The  intermediate 


io8  Flozve7^s  arid  their  Pedigrees. 

stages  are  all  suppressed.  This  is  not  always  the 
case :  there  are  many  plants  which  begin  with  a 
simple  type  of  leaf,  and  gradually  progress  to  a  com- 
plex one  by  many  small  steps  ;  just  as  the  tadpole 
grows  slowly  to  be  a  frog  by  budding  out  first  one 
pair  of  legs  and  then  another,  and  next  losing  his 
tail  and  his  gills,  and  finally  emerging  on  dry  land  a 
full-fledged  amphibian.  The  goose-grass,  however, 
rather  resembles  the  butterfly,  which  passes  at  once 
from  the  creeping  caterpillar  to  the  complete  winged 
form,  all  the  intermediate  stages  being  compressed 
into  the  short  chrysalis  period  ;  only  our  plant  has 
not  even  a  chrysalis  shape  to  pass  through.  It  is  in 
reality  a  very  advanced  and  specially  developed  type 
— the  analogue,  if  not  of  man  among  the  animals,  at 
least  of  a  highly  respectable  chimpanzee  or  intelligent 
gorilla — and  so  it  has  learnt  at  last  to  pass  straight 
from  its  embryo  state  as  a  two-leaved  plantlet  to  its 
typical  adult  form  as  a  trailing,  whorled,  and  prickly 
creeper. 

And  now  let  us  next  look  at  this  adult  form  itself 
Here  I  have  cut  a  little  bit  of  it  for  you  with  my 
penknife,  and,  if  you  like,  I  will  lend  you  my  pocket 
lens  to  magnify  it  slightly.  The  fragment  I  have 
cut  for  you  consists  of  a  single  half-inch  of  the  stem, 
with  one  whorl  of  six  long  pointed  leaves.     You  will 


Cleavers. 


109 


observe,  first,  that  the  stem  is  quadrangular,  not  round  ; 
secondly,  that  the  leaves  are  lance-shaped,  not  oval  ; 
and  thirdly,  that  both  stem  and  leaves  are  edged  with 
little  sharp  curved  prickles,  pointing  backward  the 
opposite  way  to  the  general  growth  of  the  plant. 
Let  us  try  to  find  out  what  is  the  origin  and  meaning 
of  these  three  marked  peculiarities. 

To  do   so  rightly  we  must  begin  by  considering 
the  near  relations  of  the  goose-grass.    In  a  systematic 
botanical     classification     our 
plant    is    ranked    as   one   of 
the    stellate   tribe,    a    subdi- 
vision of  the  great  family  of 
the     Rubiaceae,     or    madder 
kind.     Now,  the  stellates  are 
so    called    because    of    their 
little  star-shaped  flowers,  and 
they  are  all  characterised  by 
two     of     these     goose-grass 
peculiarities  —  namely,    the    square    stems    and    the 
whorled   leaves — while  the  third  point,  the  possession 
of  recurved  prickles  on  the  angles  of  the  stalk  and 
the  edges  of  the  leaves,  is  a  special  personal  habit  of 
the  goose-grass  species  itself,  with  one  or  two  more  of 
its  near  relations.     It  will  be  best  for  us,  therefore,  to 
ask  first  what  is  the  origin  and  meaning  of  the  charac- 


FiG.  24. — Stem  of  Cleavers. 


I  lo  Flowers  and  thei}^  Pedigrees. 

teristics  which  our  plant  shares  with  all  its  tribe,  and 
afterwards  to  pass  on  to  those  which  are  quite  con- 
fined to  its  own  little  minor  group  of  highly  evolved 
species. 

What,  then,  is  the  use  to  the  goose-grass  of  these 
small,  narrow  thickly  whorled  leaves  ?  Why  are  they 
not  all  and  always  large,  flat,  and  oval,  like  the  two 
seed  leaves  ?  The  answer  must  be  sought  in  the 
common  habits  of  all  the  stellate  tribe.  They  are 
without  exception  small  creeping,  weedy  plants,  which 
grow  among  the  dense  and  matted  vegetation  of 
hedgerows,  banks,  heaths,  thickets,  and  other  very 
tangled  places.  Now,  plants  which  live  in  such 
situations  must  necessarily  have  small  or  minutely 
subdivided  leaves,  like  those  of  wild  chervil,  fool's 
parsley,  herb-Robert,  and  fumitory.  The  reason  for 
this  is  clear  enough.  Leaves  depend  for  their  growth 
upon  air  and  sunlight  :  they  must  be  supplied  with 
carbonic  acid  to  assimilate,  and  solar  rays  to  turn  off 
the  oxygen  and  build  up  the  carbon  into  their  system. 
In  open  fields  or  bare  spaces,  big  leaves  like  burdock, 
or  rhubarb,  or  coltsfoot  can  find  food  and  space  ;  but 
where  carbonic  acid  is  scarce,  and  light  is  intercepted 
by  neighbouring  plants,  all  the  leaves  must  needs  be 
fine  and  divided  into  almost  threadlike  segments. 
The  competition  for  the  carbon  under  such  circum- 


Cleavers.  1 1 1 


stances  is  exceedingly  fierce.  For  example,  in  water 
only  very  small  quantities  of  gas  are  dissolved,  so 
that  all  submerged  water-plants  have  extremely  thin 
waving  filaments  instead  of  flat  blades  ;  and  one  such 
plant,  the  water-crowfoot,  has  even  two  types  of 
foliage  on  the  same  stem  —  submerged  leaves  of  this 
lacelike  character,  together  with  large,  expanded, 
floating  leaves  which  loll  upon  the  surface  something 
like  those  of  the  water-lily.  In  the  same  way  hedge- 
row weeds,  which  jostle  thickly  against  one  another, 
have  a  constant  hard  struggle  for  the  carbon  and  the 
sunshine,  and  grow  out  accordingly  into  numerous 
small  subdivided  leaflets,  often  split  up  time  after 
time  into  segments  and  sub-segments  of  the  most 
intricate  sort.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  each 
individual  leaf  has  its  shape  wholly  determined  for  it 
by  the  amount  of  sun  and  air  which  it  in  particular 
happens  to  obtain,  but  that  each  species  has  slowly 
acquired  by  natural  selection  the  kind  of  leaf  which 
best  fitted  its  peculiar  habitat.  Those  plants  survive 
whose  foliage  adapts  them  to  live  in  the  circum- 
stances where  it  has  pleased  nature  to  place  them, 
and  those  plants  die  out  without  descendants  whose 
constitution  fails  in  any  respect  to  square  with  that 
inconvenient  conglomeration  of  external  facts  that 
we  call  their  environment. 


I  12 


Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


That  is  why  the  goose-grass  and  the  other  stellate 
weeds  have  foliage  of  this  minute  character,  instead 
of  broad  blades  like  the  two  seed  leaves.  But  all 
plants  of  tangly  growth  do  not  attain  their  end  in 
precisely  the  same  manner.  Sometimes  one  plan 
succeeds  best  and  sometimes  another.  In  most  cases 
the  originally  round  and  simple  leaf  gets  split  up  by 
gradual  steps  into  several  smaller  leaflets.  In  the 
stellate  tribe,  however,  the  same  object  is  provided 
for  in  a  widely  different  fashion.  Instead  of  the 
primitive  leaf  dividing  into  numerous  leaflets,  a  num- 
ber of  organs  which  were  not  originally  leaves  grow 
into  exact  structural  and  functional  resemblance  to 
those  which  were.     Strictly  speaking,  in   this  whorl 

of  six  little  lance-shaped 
blades,  precisely  similar  to 
one  another,  only  two  op- 
posite ones  are  true  leaves  ; 
the  other  four  are  in  fact, 
to  use  a  very  technical 
term,  interpetiolar  stipules. 
A  stipule,  you  know,  of 
course,  is  a  little  fringe  or 
tag  which  often  appears  at 
the  point  where  the  leaf  stalk  joins  the  stem,  and 
its  chief  use  seems  to  be  to  prevent  ants  and  other 


Fig.  25. 
Interpetiolar  Stipules. 


Cleave7's,  1 1 3 


destructive  insects  from  creeping  up  the  petiole.  But 
in  all  the  stellate  plants  the  two  little  stipules  on  each 
side  of  each  leaf  have  grown  gradually  out  into  active 
green  foliar  organs,  to  supplement  and  assist  the 
leaves,  until  at  last  they  have  become  as  long  and 
broad  as  the  original  leaflets,  and  have  formed  with 
them  a  perfect  whorl  of  six  or  eight  precisely  similar 
blades.  How  do  we  know  that .''  you  ask.  In  this 
simple  way,  my  dear  sir.  The  other  Rubiaceae — that 
is  to  say,  the  remainder  of  the  great  family  to  which 
the  stellate  tribe  belongs — have  no  whorls,  but  only 
two  opposite  leaves  ;  and  we  have  many  reasons  for 
supposing  that  they  represent  the  simpler  and  more 
primitive  type,  from  which  the  stellate  plants  are 
specialised  and  highly  developed  descendants.  But 
between  the  opposite  leaves  grow  a  pair  of  small 
stipules,  occupying  just  the  same  place  as  the  whorled 
leaflets  in  the  goose-grass  ;  and  in  some  intermediate 
species  these  stipules  have  begun  to  grow^  out  into 
expanded  green  blades,  thus  preserving  for  us  an 
early  stage  on  the  road  towards  the  development  of 
the  true  stell^tes.  Accordingly,  we  are  justified  in 
believing  that  in  the  whorls  of  goose-grass  the  same 
process  has  been  carried  a  step  further,  till  leaves  and 
stipules  have  at  last  become  almost  indistinguishable. 
There  is,  however,  one  way  in  which  we  can  still 


1 1  A.  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

distinguish  the  original  true  leaves  of  each  whorl  from 
the  leaf-like  stipules.  Only  two  leaves  out  of  the  six 
ever  have  buds  or  branches  proceeding  from  their 
axils  ;  and  this  last  token  infallibly  marks  out  for  us 
which  are  the  real  primitive  opposite  pair,  and  which 
the  spurious  imitation. 

What  may  be  the  use  of  the  square  stem  it  would 
be  more  difficult  to  decide.  Perhaps  it  may  serve  to 
protect  the  plant  from  being  trodden  down  and  broken  ; 
perhaps  by  its  angularity  and  stringiness  it  may 
render  it  unpalatable  to  herbivorous  animals.  This 
much  at  least  is  certain,  that  very  few  cows  or  donkeys 
will  eat  goose-grass.  There  is  another  large  family 
of  plants — the  dead-nettle  tribe — all  of  which  have 
also  square  stems  ;  and  they  are  similarly  rejected  as 
fodder  by  cattle.  Indeed,  the  very  fact  that  the 
stellate  tribe  have  become  thus  quadrangular,  while 
the  other  and  earlier  members  of  the  madder  kind, 
like  coffee  and  gardenia,  have  round  stems,  in  itself 
suggests  the  idea  that  there  must  be  some  sufficient 
reason  for  the  change,  or  else  it  would  never  have 
taken  place  ;  but,  as  in  many  other  cases,  what  that 
reason  may  be  I  really  cannot  with  any  confidence 
inform  you  from  my  simple  professional  chair  on  the 
gate  here.  If  I  were  only  at  Kew  Gardens,  now — 
well,  that  might  be  a  different  matter. 

And    now   let    us    come   down  to    the  individual 


Cleavers.  1 1 5 


peculiarities  of  the  goose-grass,  and  ask  what  is  the 
use  of  the  wee  recurved  prickles  which  you  can  see 
thickly  scattered  on  the  stalk  and  whorls  by  the  aid 
of  my  pocket  lens.  You  observe  that  they  occur  all 
along  each  angle  of"  the  stem,  and  around  the  edge 
and  midribs  of  the  leaflets  as  well.  If  you  try  to  pull 
a  bit  of  goose-grass  out  of  the  thicket  entire,  you  will 
soon  see  the  function  they  subserve.  The  plant,  you 
notice,  resists  your  effort  at  once  ;  the  little  prickles 
catch  securely  on  to  the  bushes  and  defeat  all  en- 
deavours to  tear  it  away.  It  is  these  prickles,  indeed, 
which  are  the  raisoit  d'etre  of  the  goose-grass  as  a 
separate  species  :  they  mark  it  off  at  once  from 
almost  all  the  other  members  of  the  same  group. 
There  are  many  allied  kinds  of  galium  in  England 
(for  galium  is  the  botanical  name  of  the  genus),  with 
very  similar  leaves  and  flowers,  but  they  all  grow  in 
shorter  bunches  and  frequent  less  thickly  populated 
situations.  Goose-grass,  however,  has  survived  and 
become  a  distinct  kind  just  in  virtue  of  these  very 
hooks.  By  their  aid  it  is  enabled  to  scramble  for 
many  feet  over  hedges  and  bushes,  though  it  is  but 
an  annual  plant ;  and  it  thus  makes  use  of  the  firm 
stem  of  yonder  hawthorn  and  this  privet  bush  by  our 
sides  to  raise  its  leaves  into  open  sunny  situations 
which  it  could  never  reach  with  its  own  slender  stalk 


ii6  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

alone.  Such  an  obvious  improvement  gives  it  an 
undoubted  advantage  in  the  struggle  for  life,  and  so 
in  its  own  special  positions  it  has  fairly  beaten  all  the 
other  galiums  out  of  the  field.  One  of  its  common 
English  names — Robin  Run-the-hedge — sufficiently 
expresses  the  exact  place  in  nature  which  it  has  thus 
adapted  itself  to  fill  and  to  adorn. 

But  how  did  the  goose-grass  first  develop  these 
little  prickles  ?  That  is  the  question.  Granting  that 
their  possession  would  give  it  an  extra  chance  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  if  once  they  were  to  occur, 
how  are  we  to  account  for  their  first  beginning  ?  In 
this  way,  as  it  seems  to  -me.  Viewed  structurally,  the 
stout  little  hooks  which  arm  the  stem  and  leaves  are 
only  thickened  hairs.  Now  hairs,  or  long  pointed 
projections  from  the  epidermis,  constantly  occur  in 
almost  all  plants,  and  in  this  very  family  they  are 
found  on  the  edges  of  the  leaflets  and  on  the  angles 
of  the  stem  among  several  allied  species.  But  such 
hairs  may  easily  happen  to  grow  a  little  thicker  or 
harder,  by  mere  individual  or  constitutional  variation  ; 
and  in  a  plant  with  habits  like  the  goose-grass 
every  increase  in  thickness  and  hardness  would  prove 
beneficial,  by  helping  the  festoons  to  creep  over  the 
bushes  among  which  they  live.  Thus  generation  after 
generation  those  incipient  goose-grasses  which  best 


Cleavers.  117 


succeeded  in  climbing  would  set  most  seed  and 
produce  most  young,  while  the  less  successful  would 
languish  in  the  shade  and  never  become  the  proud 
ancestors  of  future  plantlets.  Even  the  less  highly 
developed  species,  such  as  the  wall  galium  and  the 
swamp  galium,  have  little  asperities  on  the  edge  of 
the  stem  ;  but,  as  they  need  to  climb  far  less  than  the 
hedgerow  goose-grass,  their  roughnesses  hardly  deserve 
to  be  described  as  prickles.  Our  own  special  subject, 
on  the  other  hand,  being  a  confirmed  creeper,  finds 
the  prickles  of  immense  use  to  it,  and  so  has  developed 
them  to  a  very  marked  extent.  The  corn  galium, 
too,  which  clings  to  the  growing  haulms  or  stubble  of 
wheat,  has  learnt  to  produce  very  similar  stout  hooks  ; 
while  the  wild  madder,  which  I  suspect  is  far  more 
closely  related  to  goose-grass  than  many  other  plants 
artificially  placed  in  the  same  genus,  has  prickles  of 
like  character,  but  much  larger,  by  whose  aid  it  trails 
over  bushes  and  hedges  for  immense  distances. 

After  the  leaves  and  stem  we  have  to  consider  the 
nature  of  the  flower.  Look  at  one  of  the  blossoms 
on  the  piece  I  gave  you,  and  you  will  easily  under- 
stand the  main  points  of  its  structure.  You  notice 
that  it  consists  of  a  single  united  corolla,  having  four 
lobes  joined  at  the  base  instead  of  distinct  and 
separate  petals,  while  the  centre  of  course  is  occupied 


Il8  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

by  the  usual  little  yellow  knobs  representing  the 
stamens  and  pistil.  Each  goose-grass  plant  produces 
many  hundreds  of  such  flowers, 
springing  in  small  loose  bunches 
from  the  axils  of  the  leaves.  What 
we  have  to  consider  now  is  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  the  parts 
Fig.  26.— Single  flower  which  make  them  up. 

of  Cleavers. 

We  have  already  seen  in  deal- 
ing with  the  daisy  that  the  really  important  organs 
of  the  blossom  are  the  little  central  yellow  knobs, 
which  do  all  the  active  work  of  fertilising  the 
ovary  and  producing  the  seeds.  The  stamens,  as 
we  then  observed,  manufacture  the  pollen,  and 
when  the  pistil  is  impregnated  with  a  grain  of 
this  golden  dust  the  fruit  begins  to  swell  and 
ripen.  But  the  corolla  or  coloured  frill  around  the 
central  organs,  which  alone  is  what  we  call  a  flower 
in  ordinary  parlance,  shows  that  the  goose-grass  is 
one  of  those  plants  which  owe  their  fertilisation  to 
the  friendly  aid  of  insects.  Blossoms  of  this  sort 
usually  seek  to  attract  the  obsequious  bee  or  the 
thirsty  butterfly  by  a  drop  of  honey  in  their  nectaries, 
supplemented  by  the  advertising  allurements  of  a 
sweet  perfume  and  a  set  of  coloured  petals.  So  much 
knowledge  about  the  functions  of  flowers  in  general 


Cleavers.  1 1 9 


we  have  already  acquired  ;  the  question  for  our 
present  consideration  is  this  :  What  gives  the  goose- 
grass  flower  in  particular  its  peculiar  shape,  colour, 
and  arrangement  ? 

First  of  all,  you  will  notice  that  it  has  a  united 
corolla— a  single  fringe  of  bloom  instead  of  several 
distinct  flower  leaves.  This  marks  its  position  as  a 
very  proud  one  in  the  floral  hierarchy  ;  for  you  will 
remember  that  only  the  most  advanced  blossoms  have 
their  originally  separate  petals  welded  into  a  solid 
continuous  piece.  Once  upon  a  time,  indeed,  the 
early  ancestors  of  our  little  creeper  had  five  distinct 
petals,  like  those  of  a  dog-rose  or  a  buttercup  ;  but 
that  was  many,  many  generations  since.  In  time 
these  petals  began  to  coalesce  slightly  at  the  base,  so 
as  to  form  a  short  tube  as  in  the  primrose  ;  and,  since 
this  arrangement  made  it  easier  for  the  insect  to  fer- 
tilise the  flowers,  because  he  was  more  certain  to 
brush  his  head  in  hunting  for  honey  against  the 
pollen-bearing  stamens  and  the  sensitive  summit  of 
the  pistil,  all  the  flowers  which  exhibited  such  a  ten- 
dency gained  a  decided  advantage  over  their  com- 
petitors, and  lived  and  flourished  accordingly,  while 
their  less  fortunate  compeers  went  to  the  wall.  So  in 
the  course  of  ages  such  tubular  flowers,  like  harebells 
and   heaths,  became  very   common,  and   to  a  great 


I20  Floiuei's  and  their  Pedigrees. 

extent  usurped  all  the  best  and  most  profitable  situa- 
tions in  nature.  Among-  them  were  the  immediate 
ancestors  of  the  goose-grass,  which  had  then  regular 
long  tubular  blossoms,  instead  of  having  a  mere  flat, 
disk-shaped  corolla  like  the  one  you  see  in  the  goose- 
grass  before  you.  But,  for  a  reason  which  I  will  pre- 
sently tell  you,  in  the  goose-grass  tribe  itself  the  tube 
has  gradually  become  shorter  and  shorter  again,  till 
at  last  there  is  nothing  left  of  it  at  all,  and  the  corolla 
consists  simply  of  four  spreading  lobes  slightly  joined 
together  by  a  little  rim  or  margin  at  the  base. 

How  do  we  know,  you  ask,  that  the  goose-grass  is 
descended  from  such  ancestral  flowers  having  a  long 
hollow  tube  ?  Why  may  it  not  be  an  early  form  of 
tubular  blossom,  a  plant  which  is  just  acquiring  such 
a  type  of  flower,  rather  than  one  which  has  once  pos- 
sessed it  and  afterwards  lost  it  t  Well,  my  dear  sir, 
your  objection  is  natural  ;  but  we  know  it  for  this 
reason.  I  told  you  some  time  since  that  the  other 
great  branch  of  the  madder  family,  which  had  stipules 
instead  of  whorled  leaves,  was  thereby  shown  to  be  a 
more  primitive  form  of  the  common  type  than  the 
stellate  tribe,  in  which  these  stipules  have  developed 
into  full-grown  leaves.  Now,  all  these  tropical 
madderlike  plants  have  large  tubular  blossoms,  per- 
fectly developed  ;  so   that   we  may   reasonably   infer 


Cleavers.  i  2 1 


the  ancestors  of  the  goose-grass  had  the  same  sort  of 
flowers  when  they  were  at  the  same  or  some  analogous 
stage  of  development.  Moreover,  amongst  the  stellate 
plants  themselves  there  are  several  which  still  retain 
the  long  tubes  to  the  blossom  ;  and 
these  are  rather  the  less  developed  than 
the  more  developed  members  of  the 
little  group.  Such  are  the  pretty  blue 
field-madder,  which  has  a  funnel-shaped 
corolla,  and  the  sweet  woodruff,  which 
has  bell-shaped  flowers.  But  the  ga-r 
Hums,  which  are  the  most  advanced  (or 
degraded)  species  of  all,  have  the  tube  Flower  of  Field- 
very  short  or  hardly  perceptible,  and 
the  more  so  in  proportion  as  they  are  most  widely 
divergent  from  the  primitive  type. 

Why,  however,  should  a  flower  which  was  once 
tubular  have  lost  its  tube  }  If  it  was  an  advantage 
to  acquire  such  a  long  narrow  throat,  must  it  not  also 
be  an  advantage  always  to  retain  it }  That  depends 
entirely  upon  the  nature  of  the  circumstances  to  which 
the  plant  must  adapt  itself  Now  the  fact  is,  the 
original  madder  group  seems  to  have  had  large  and 
showy  flowers,  which  were  fertilised  by  regular  honey- 
sucking  insects,  such  as  bees  and  butterflies  and  hum- 
ming-bird hawk-moths.     These  are  tropical    shrubs, 


122  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

often  of  considerable  size,  and  of  very  different  habits 
from  our  little  goose-grass.  But  in  the  temperate 
regions,  since  the  earth  has  begun  to  cool  into  zones, 
some  of  these  rubiaceous  plants  have  found  out  that 
they  could  get  along  better  by  becoming  little  creep- 
ing weeds  ;  and  these  are  the  stellates,  including  our 
present  friend.  Accordingly  they  have  mostly  given 
up  the  attempt  to  attract  big  honey-sucking  insects 
whose  long  proboscis  can  probe  the  recesses  of  jasmine 
or  woodbine,  and  have  laid  themselves  out  to  please 
the  small  flies  and  miscellaneous  little  beetles,  which 
serve  almost  equally  well  to  carry  their  pollen  from 
head  to  head.  Now  the  flowers  which  specially  cater 
for  such  minor  insects  are  usually  quite  flat,  so  that 
every  kind  alike  can  get  at  the  honey  or  the  pollen  ; 
and  that,  I  fancy,  is  why  the  goose-grass  and  so  many 
of  its  allies  have  lost  their  tubes.  They  are,  in  fact, 
somewhat  degenerate  forms,  descended  from  highly 
adapted  tropical  types,  but  now  readjusted  to  a 
humbler  though  more  successful  grade  of  existence. 

Closely  connected  with  this  question  is  the  other 
and  very  interesting  problem  of  their  colour.  Why 
is  goose-grass  white  ?  For  the  very  same  reason  — 
because  it  wishes  to  attract  all  sorts  of  little  insects 
impartially.  For  this  purpose  white  is  the  best 
colour.     Almost   all   flowers  which   thus  depend   for 


Cleavers. 


fertilisation  upon  many  different  species  of  winged 
visitors  are  white.  And,  indeed,  the  sort  of  colour  in 
each  kind  of  stellate  flower  (as  in  all  others)  depends 
largely  upon  the  sort  of  insects  it  wishes  to  attract. 
Thus  the  little  field-madder,  which  has  a  long  tube 
and  is  fertilised  by  honey-suckers  of  a  high  type,  is 
blue  or  pink,  as  all  the  family  once  was,  no  doubt, 
before  it  began  to  bid  for  more  vulgar  aid.  Then  the 
lesser  woodruff,  or  squinancy-wort,  whose  tube  is 
.  shorter,  has  white  cups  tinged  with  lilac.  The  goose- 
grass  and  most  of  its  neighbours,  whose  flowers  have 
undergone  still  greater  degeneration,  are  simply  white, 
because  they  wish  to  please  all  parties  equally,  and 
white  is  of  course  the  most  neutral  colour  they  could 
possibly  assume.  Finally,  the  lady's  bedstraw,  which 
has  no  tube,  depends  upon  little  colour-loving  beetles 
for  fertilisation,  and,  like  many  other  beetle  flowers,  it 
is  bright  yellow. 

This  order  of  degradation  exactly  reverses  the 
upward  order  of  chromatic  progress  ;  for,  as  flowers 
advance  in  type,  they  pass  from  yellow,  which  is  the 
lowest  colour,  through  white,  pink,  red,  and  lilac,  to 
purple  and  blue,  which  are  the  highest.  And  when 
through  any  special  cause  they  begin  to  retrogress, 
they  pass  backward  through  the  same  stages  in  inverse 
order. 


124  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


Again,  you  may  have  observed  that  I  said  just 
now  the  primitive  ancestor  of  the  goose-grass  had  five 
petals.  But  the  present  united  corolla  has  only  four 
lobes  instead  of  five,  and  it  is  this  arrangement,  ap- 
parently, which  has  gained  for  the  whole  tribe  the 
name  of  stellate.  Now  the  tropical  Rubiaceae,  which 
we  saw  reason  to  believe  represent  an  earlier  stage  of 
development  than  the  goose-grass  group,  have  usually 
five  lobes  to  the  corolla  ;  and  in  this  respect  they 
agree  in  the  lump  with  the  whole  great  class  of  dico- 
tyledonous plants  to  which  they  belong.  Therefore 
we  may  fairly  conclude  that  to  have  four  lobes  instead 
of  five  is  a  mark  of  further  specialisation  in  the 
stellates  ;  in  other  words,  it  is  they  that  have  lost  a 
lobe,  not  the  other  madder-worts  that  have  added 
one.  This,  then,  gives  us  a  further  test  of  relative 
development — or  perhaps  we  ought  rather  to  say  of 
relative  degeneration — among  the  stellate  tribe.  Wild 
madder,  whose  flowers  are  comparatively  large,  has 
usually  five  lobes.  Yellow  crosswort  has  most  of  its 
blossoms  four-lobed,  interspersed  with  a  few  five-lobed 
specimens.  Goose-grass  occasionally  produces  large 
five-lobed  flowers,  but  has  normally  only  four  lobes. 
The  still  smaller  skulking  species  have  almost  inva- 
riably four  only.  In  fact,  the  suppression  of  one 
original  petal  seems  to  be  due  to  the  general  dwarfing 


Cleavers.  125 


of  the  flower  in  most  of  the  stellate  tribe.  The  corolla 
has  got  too  small  to  find  room  for  five  lobes,  so  it  cuts 
the  number  down  to  four  instead.  This  is  a  common 
result  of  extreme  dwarfing.  For  example,  the  tiny 
central  florets  of  the  daisy  ought  properly  to  be 
pinked  out  into  five  points,  representing  the  five 
primitive  petals,  but  they  often  have  the  number 
reduced  to  four.  So,  too,  in  the  little  moschatel,  the 
outer  flowers  of  each  bunch  have  five  lobes,  but  the 
central  one,  which  is  crowded  around  and  closely 
jammed  by  the  others,  has  regularly  lost  one  in  every 
case. 

There  is  just  one  more  peculiarity  of  the  goose- 
grass  blossom  which  I  must  not  wholly  overlook. 
You  see  this  rough  little  bulb  or  ball  beneath  the 
corolla,  covered  with  incipient  prickles  ?  That  is  the 
part  which  will  finally  grow  into  the  fruit,  after  some 
friendly  insect  has  brought  pollen  on  his  legs  from 
some  neighbouring  flower  to  impregnate  the  ovary  of 
this.  Now,  what  I  want  you  to  notice  is  the  fact  that 
the  future  fruit  here  lies  below  the  corolla— below  the 
flower,  as  most  of  us  would  say  in  ordinary  language. 
But  if  you  think  of  a  strawberry,  a  raspberry,  or  a 
poppy,  you  will  recollect  that  the  part  which  is  to 
become  the  fruit  there  grows  above  the  corolla,  and 
that  the  petals  are  inserted  at  its  base.     This  last  is 


I  26  Flowej^s  and  their  Pedigi^ecs. 

the  original  and  normal  position  of  the  parts.  How 
and  why,  then,  has  the  ovary  in  the  goose-grass  kind 
managed  to  get  below  the  petals  ?  Well,  the  process 
has  been  something  like  this  :  When  the  flowers  were 
tubular  they  were  surrounded  by  a  tubular  calyx,  and 
the  ovary  stood  in  the  middle  of  both.  But  in  the 
course  of  time,  in  order  to  increase  the  chances  of 
successful    fertilisation,   the   calyx    tube,  the   corolla 


Fig.  28. — Strawberry  and  Asperula. 
To  show  Inferior  and  Superior  Ovaries, 

tube,  and  the  ovary  in  the  centre  all  coalesced  into 
one  solid  piece — grew  together,  in  fact,  just  as  the 
five  petals  had  already  done.  So  now  this  little  bulb 
really  represents  the  calyx  and  ovary  combined  ; 
while  the  corolla,  only  beginning  to  show  at  the  top, 
where  it  expands  into  its  four  lobes,  looks  as  if  it 
started  from  the  head  of  the  fruit,  whereas  in  reality 
it  once  started  at  the  bottom,  but  has  now  so  com- 
pletely united  with  the  calyx  in  its  lower  part  as  to 


Clcaz 


vei's. 


127 


be  quite  indistinguishable.  Thus  the  fruit  is  not  in 
this  plant  a  mere  ripe  form  of  the  ovary,  but  is  a 
compound  organ  consisting  of  the  calyx  outside,  and 
the  ovary  inside,  with  the  tube  of  the  corolla  quite 
crushed  out  of  existence  between  them. 

Last  of  all,  let  us  look  at  the  prickly  fruit  itself  in 
its  ripe  condition.  Some  small  fly  has  now  fertilised 
the  head  with  pollen  from  a  brother  blossom  ;  the 
corolla  and  the  stamens  have  fallen  off;  the  embryo 
seeds  within  have  begun  to  swell  ;  the  mother  plant 
has  stocked  them  with  a  little  store  of  horny  albumen 
to  feed  the  tiny  plantlets  when  they  are  first  cast 
forth  to  shift  for  themselves  in  an  unsympathetic 
world  ;  and  now  the  fruit  here  is 
almost  ready  to  be  detached  from  the 
stalk  and  borne  to  the  spot  where 
it  must  make  its  small  experimen 
in    getting    on    in    life    on    its     own  fig.  29. 

account.  Before  I  tell  you  how  it  ^^^^'t  of  cleavers, 
manages  to  get  itself  transported  free  of  cost  to  a 
suitable  situation,  I  should  like  you  to  observe  its 
shape  and  arrangement.  It  consists  of  two  cells  or 
carpels  united  in  the  middle,  and  each  of  these  contains 
a  single  seed.  Once  upon  a  time  there  were  several 
cells,  as  there  still  are  in  some  of  the  tropical  Rubiacese, 
and  each  cell  contained  several  seeds,  as  is  the  case 


128  Floiuei's  and  their  Pedigrees. 


with  many  of  the  southern  species  to  the  present  day. 
But  when  the  stellate  tribe  took  to  being  small  and 
weedy,  they  gave  up  their  additional  seeds  and  limited 
themselves  to  one  only  in  each  cell.  This  is  another 
common  result  of  the  dwarfing  process,  and  it  is  found 
again  in  all  the  daisy  tribe  and  in  the  umbellates,  such 
as  fool's  parsley.  To  make  up,  however,  for  the  loss 
in  number  of  the  seeds  in  each  fruit,  the  number  of 
fruits  on  each  plant  is  still  enormous.  How  many 
there  are  on  a  single  weed  of  goose-grass  I  have 
never  had  the  patience  to  count,  but  certainly  not  less 
than  several  hundred.  You  might  find  it  a  nice 
amusement  for  a  statistical  mind  to  fill  up  this  lacuna 
in  our  botanical  knowledge. 

Most  of  the  stellate  plants  have  simple  little  fruits 
without  any  special  means  of  dispersion,  but  in  the 
goose-grass  the  same  sort  of  prickles  as  those  of  the 
stem  and  leaves  are  further  utilised  for  carrying  the 
seed  to  its  proper  place.  You  know  seeds  have  many 
devices  for  ensuring  their  dispersion  to  a  distance 
from  the  mother  plant.  Some  are  surrounded  by 
edible  pulp,  as  in  the  case  of  the  raspberry  or  the 
gooseberry ;  and  these  are  swallowed  by  birds  or 
animals,  through  whose  body  they  pass  undigested, 
and  thus  get  deposited  under  circumstances  peculiarly 
favourable  to  their  germination  and  growth.     Others 


Cleavers,  129 


have  little  wings  or  filaments,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
dandelion  or  the  valerian  ;  and  these  get  blown  by 
the  wind  to  their  final  resting-place.  Yet  others, 
again,  are  providea  with  hooks  or  prickles,  like  the 
burr  and  the  houndstongue,  by  whose  means  they 
cling  to  the  wool  of  sheep,  the  feathers  and  legs  of 
birds,  or  the  hair  of  animals,  and  thus  get  carried  from 
hedge  to  hedge  and  rubbed  off  against  the  bushes, 
so  as  to  fall  on  to  the  ground  beneath.  Now  this 
last  plan  is  especially  well  adapted  for  a  plant  like 
the  goose-grass,  which  lives  by  straggling  over  low 
brambles  and  hawthorns,  for  it  ensures  the  deposition 
of  the  seed  in  the  exact  place  where  the  full-grown  weed 
will  find  such  support  and  friendly  assistance  as  it  pecu- 
liarly requires.  Accordingly,  we  may  be  sure  that  if 
any  half-developed  goose-grass  ever  showed  any 
tendency  to  prickliness  on  its  fruit,  it  would  gain  a 
great  advantage  over  its  neighbours  in  the  struggle 
for  existence,  and  the  tendency  would  soon  harden 
under  the  influence  of  natural  selection  into  a  fixed 
habit  of  the  species.  Is  there  any  way  in  which  such 
a  tendency  could  be  set  up  } 

Yes,  easily  enough,  as  it  seems  to  me.  You 
remember  the  outer  coat  of  the  fruit  is  really  the 
calyx,  and  this  calyx  would  be  naturally  more  or  less 
hairy,  like  the  original  leaves.     We  have  only  to  sup- 


Floioers  and  their  Pcdio-rees. 


pose  that  the  calyx  hairs  followed  suit  with  the  stem 
hairs,  and  began  to  develop  into  stiff  prickles,  in 
order  to  understand  how  the  burrlike  mechanism  was 
first  set  up.  Supposing  it  once  begun,  in  ever  so 
slight  a  degree,  every  little  burr  which  succeeded  in 
sticking  to  a  sheep's  legs  or  a  small  bird's  breast 
would  be  pretty  sure,  sooner  or  later,  of  reaching  a 
place  where  its  seeds  could  live  and  thrive.  It  is 
from  this  habit  of  cleaving  or  sticking  to  one's  legs 
that  the  plant  has  obtained  one  of  its  English  names 
— cleavers.  Moreover,  to  make  the  development  of 
the  burr  all  the  more  comprehensible,  many  of  the 
other  galiums  have  rather  rough  or  granulated  fruits, 
while  one  kind — the  wall  galium — which  in  England 
has  smooth  or  warty  fruit,  has  its  surface  covered  in 
southern  Europe  with  stiff  hairs  or  bristles.  Another 
English  galium  besides  goose-grass  has  hooked  bristles 
on  its  fruit,  though  they  are  not  so  hard  or  adhesive  as 
in  our  own  proper  subject.  Thus  the  very  steps  in  the 
evolution  of  the  bristly  fruit  are  clearly  preserved  for 
us  to  the  present  day  in  one  or  other  of  the  allied  species. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  very  similar  little  corn 
galium,  which  has  prickles  on  its  stem  and  leaves  to 
enable  it  to  cling  to  the  growing  straw  in  the  wheat- 
fields,  has  no  hooks  at  all  upon  its  fruit.  Instead  of 
a  burr  it  produces  only  little  rough-looking  knobs  or 


Cleavers,  1 3 1 


capsules.     At  first  sight,  this  difference  between  the 
plants  is  rather  puzzling,  but  when  we  come  to  con- 
sider the  peculiar  habits  of  the  corn   galium  we  can 
see  at  once  the  reason  for  the  change.     Like  most 
other  cornfield  weeds,  it  blossoms  with  the  wheat,  and 
its  seed  ripens   with  the    mellowing   of  the   shocks. 
Both   are  cut   down  together,   and  the   seed    of  the 
galium  is  thrashed  out  at  the  same  time  as  the  grain. 
Thus  it  gets  sown   with   the  seed  corn  from  year  to 
year,  and  it  would  only  lose  by  having  a  prickly  fruit, 
which  would  get  carried  away  to  places  less  adapted 
for  its  special  habits  than  the   arable  fields.     It  has 
accommodated    itself  to   its  own  peculiar  corner  in 
nature,  just  as  the   goose-grass    has    accommodated 
itself  to  the  hedgerows  and  thickets.     So  again,  in  the 
wild  madder,  the  fruit,  instead  of  becoming  rough  and 
clinging,  has  grown  soft  and   pulpy,  so  as  to   form  a 
small  blackish  berry,  much  appreciated  by  birds,  who 
thus  help  unconsciously  to  disperse  its  seeds.     Each 
plant  simply  goes  in  the  way  that  circumstances  lead 
it,  and  that  is  why  we  get  such  infinite   variety  of 
detail  and  special  adaptation  even  within  the  narrow 
limits  of  a  single  small  group. 

And  now  I  think  you  are  tired  both  of  your  seat 
on  the  gate  and  of  my  long  sermon.  Yet  the  points 
to  which  I  have  called  your  attention  are  really  only 


Flowers  and  their  Pedio^rees. 


a  very  few  out  of  all  the  facts  which  go  to  make  up 
the  strange,  eventful  life-history  of  this  little  creeper. 
If  you  had  but  leisure  and  patience  to  hear  me  I 
might  go  on  to  point  out  many  other  curious  details 
of  organisation  which  help  us  to  reconstruct  the 
family  pedigree  of  the  goose-grass.  There  is  not  a 
single  organ  in  the  plant  which  does  not  imply  whole 
volumes  of  unwritten  ancestral  annals  ;  and  to  set 
them  all  forth  in  full  would  require  not  a  single  hour 
but  a  whole  course  of  ten  or  twenty  sermons.  Still,  I 
hope  I  have  done  enough  to  suggest  to  you  the 
immense  wealth  of  thought  which  the  goose-grass  is 
capable  of  calling  up  in  the  mind  of  the  evolutionary 
botanist  ;  and  I  trust,  when  you  next  get  your  clothes 
covered  with  those  horrid  little  cleavers,  you  will  be 
disposed  to  think  more  tenderly  and  respectfully 
than  formerly  of  an  ancient  and  highly  developed 
English  weed. 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  133 


V. 

THE   ORIGIN  OF    WHEAT. 

Wheat  ranks  by  descent  as  a  degenerate  and  de- 
graded lily.  Such  in  brief  is  the  text  which  this 
paper  sets  out  to  prove,  and  which  the  whole  course 
of  evolutionary  botany  tends  every  day  more  and 
more  fully  to  confirm.  By  thus  from  the  very  outset 
placing  clearly  before  our  eyes  the  goal  of  our  argu- 
ment, we  shall  be  able  the  better  to  understand  as  we 
go  whither  each  item  of  the  cumulative  evidence  is 
really  tending.  We  must  endeavour  to  start  with  the 
simplest  forms  of  the  great  group  of  plants  to  which  the 
cereals  and  the  other  grasses  belong,  and  we  must  try 
to  see  by  what  steps  this  primitive  type  gave  birth,  first 
to  the  brilliantly  coloured  lilies,  next  to  the  degraded 
rushes  and  sedges,  and  then  to  the  still  more  degene- 
rate grasses,  from  one  or  other  of  whose  richer  grains 
man  has  finally  developed  his  wheat,  his  rice,  his 
millet,  and  his  barley.  We  shall  thus  trace  through- 
out the  whole  pedigree  of  wheat  from  the  time  when 


134  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


its  ancestors  first  diverged  from  the  common  stock  of 
the  lilies  and  the  water-plantains,  to  the  time  when 
savao-e  man  found  it  growing  wild  among  the  untilled 
plains  of  prehistoric  Asia,  and  took  it  under  his  special 
protection  in  the  little  garden  plots 
around  his  wattled  hut,  whence  it  has 
gradually  altered  under  his  constant 
selection  into  the  golden  grain  that  now 
covers  half  the  lowland  tilth  of  Europe 
and  America.  There  is  no  page  in 
botanical  history  more  full  of  genuine 
romance  than  this  ;  and  there  is  no 
page  in  which  the  evidence  is  clearer  or 
more  convincing  for  those  who  will  take 
the  easy  trouble  to  read  it  aright. 

Moreover,  the  case  of  wheat  is  a 
very  interesting  one,  after  the  case  of 
the  daisy  and  of  cleavers,  because  it 
exhibits  a  different  order  of  evolution, 
that  namely  of  continuous  degradation. 
Head  of  Wheat.  While  the  daisy  has  gone  constantly  up, 
and  while  the  goose-grass  has  fallen  but  a  little  after 
a  long  course  of  upward  development,  the  grasses 
generally  have  from  the  very  first  exhibited  a  con- 
stant and  unbroken  structural  decline. 

The    fixed    point    from    which    we    start    on    our 


Fig.  30. 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  135 

inquiry  is  the  primitive  and  undifferentiated  ancestral 
flowering  plant.  Into  the  previous  history  of  the  line 
from  which  the  cereals  are  ultimately  descended,  I  do 
not  propose  here  to  enter.  It  must  suffice  for  our 
present  purpose  to  say  dogmatically  that  the  flowering 
plants  as  a  whole  derive  their  origin  from  a  still 
earlier  flowerless  stock,  akin  in  many  points  to  the 
ferns  and  the  club-mosses,  but  differing  from  them  in 
the  relatively  important  part  borne  in  its  economy  by 
the  mechanism  for  cross-fertilisation.  The  earliest 
flowering  plant  of  the  great  monocotyledonous  divi- 
sion (the  only  one  with  which  we  shall  here  have 
anything  to  do)  started  apparently  by  possessing  a 
very  simple  and  inconspicuous  blossom,  with  a  central 
row  of  three  ovaries,  surrounded  by  two  or  more  rows 
of  three  stamens  each,  without  any  coloured  petals  or 
other  ornamental  adjuncts  of  any  sort.  I  need  hardly 
here  explain  even  to  the  unbotanical  reader  that  the 
ovaries  contain  the  embryo  seeds,  and  that  they  only 
swell  into  fertile  fruits  after  they  have  been  duly 
impregnated  by  pollen  from  the  stamens,  preferably 
those  of  another  plant,  or  at  least  of  another  blossom 
on  the  same  stem.  Seeds  fertilised  by  pollen  from 
their  own  flower,  as  Mr.  Darwin  has  shown,  produce 
relatively  weak  and  sickly  seedlings  ;  seeds  fertilised 
by  pollen    from  a   sister  plant  of  the   same  species 


136  Flowers  and  tJieir  Pedigi^ees. 

produce  relatively  strong  and  hearty  seedlings.  The 
two  cases  are  exactly  analogous  to  the  effects  of 
breeding  in  and  in  or  of  an  infusion  of  fresh  blood 
among  races  of  men  and  animals.  Hence  it  naturally 
happens  that  those  plants  whose  organisation  in  any 
way  favours  the  ready  transference  of  pollen  from  one 
flower  to  another  gain  an  advantage  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  so  tend  on  the  average  to  thrive  and  to 
survive  ;  while  those  plants  whose  organisation  renders 
such  transference  difficult  or  impossible  stand  at  a  con- 
stant disadvantage  in  the  race  for  life,  and  are  liable  to 
fall  behind  in  the  contest,  or  at  least  to  survive  only  in 
the  most  unfavourable  and  least  occupied  parts  of  the 
vegetal  economy.  Familiar  as  this  principle  has  now 
become  to  all  scientific  biologists,  it  is  yet  so  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  comprehension  of  the  present  ques- 
tion, whose  key-note  it  forms,  that  I  shall  make  no 
apology  for  thus  once  more  stating  it  at  the  outset 
as  the  general  law  which  must  guide  us  through  all 
the  intricacies  of  the  development  of  wheat. 

Our  primitive  ancestral  lily,  not  yet  a  lily  or  any- 
thing else  nameable  in  our  existing  terms,  had  thus 
to  start  with,  one  triple  set  of  ovaries,  and  about  three 
triple  sets  of  pollen-b6aring  stamens  ;  and  to  the  very 
end  this  triple  arrangement  may  be  traced  under  more 
or  less  difficult  disguises  in  every  one  of  its  numerous 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  137 

modern  descendants.  It  thus  differed  from  the 
primitive  ancestor  of  dicotyledonous  flowers  like  the 
daisy  and  the  goose  grass,  which  as  we  have  seen 
had  its  parts  arranged  in  whorls  of  five,  not  in  whorls 
of  three,  like  the  ancestral  lily.  No  single  survivor, 
however,  now  represents  for  us  this  earliest  ideal 
stage  ;  we  can  only  infer  its  existence  from  the 
diverse  forms  assumed  by  its  various  divergent 
modifications  at  the  present  day,  all  of  which  show- 
many  signs  of  being  ultimately  derived  from  some 
such  primordial  and  simple  ancestor.  The  first  step 
in  advance  consisted  in  the  acquisition  of  petals,  which 
are  now  possessed  in  a  more  or  less  rudimentary 
shape  by  all  the  tribe  of  trinary  flowers,  or  at  least  if 
quite  absent  are  shown  to  have  been  once  present  by 
intermediate  links  or  by  abortive  rudiments.  There 
are  even  now  flowers  of  this  class  which  do  not  at 
present  possess  any  observable  petals  at  all  ;  but 
these  can  be  shown  (as  we  shall  see  hereafter)  not  to 
be  unaltered  descendants  of  the  prime  type,  but  on 
the  contrary  to  be  very  degraded  and  profoundly 
modified  forms,  derived  from  later  petal-bearing 
ancestors,  and  still  connected  with  their  petal-bearing 
allies  by  all  stages  of  intervening  degeneracy.  The 
original  petalless  lily  has  long  since  died  out  before 
the  fierce  competition  of  its  own  more  advanced 
10 


138  Flmvcrs  and  their  Pedigrees. 

descendants ;  and  the  existing  petalless  reeds  or 
cuckoo-pints,  as  well  as  the  apparently  petalless 
wheats  and  grasses,  are  special  adaptive  forms  of  the 
newer  petal-bearing  rushes  and  lilies. 

The  origin  of  the  coloured  petals,  we  know,  is 
almost  certainly  due  to  the  selective  action  of  primaeval 
insects.  The  soft  pollen,  and  perhaps  too  the  slight 
natural  exudations  around  the  early  flowers,  afforded 
food  to  the  ancestral  creatures  not  then  fully  devel- 
oped into  anything  that  we  could  distinctively  call  a 
bee  or  a  butterfly.  But  as  the  insects  flew  about  from 
one  head  to  another  in  search  of  such  food,  they 
carried  small  quantities  of  pollen  with  them  from 
flower  to  flower.  This  pollen,  brushed  from  their 
bodies  on  to  the  sensitive  surface  of  the  ovaries, 
fertilised  the  embryo  seeds,  and  so  gave  the  fortunate 
plants  which  happened  to  attract  the  insects  all  the 
benefits  of  a  salutary  cross.  Accordingly,  the  more 
the  flowers  succeeded  in  attracting  the  eyes  of  their 
winged  guests,  the  better  were  they  likely  to  succeed 
in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In  some  cases,  the 
outer  row  of  stamens  appears  to  have  become  flattened 
and  petal-like,  as  still  often  happens  with  plants  in 
the  rich  soil  of  our  gardens  ;  and  in  these  flatter 
stamens  the  oxidised  juices  assumed  perhaps  a 
livelier  yellow  than   even  the  central  stamens  them- 


The  Origin  of  Wheat,  139 

selves.  If  the  flowers  had  fertilised  their  own  ovaries 
this  change  would  of  course  have  proved  disadvan- 
tag"eous,  by  depriving  them  entirely  of  the  services  of 
one  row  of  stamens  ;  for  the  new  flattened  and  petal- 
like structures  lost  at  once  the  habit  of  producing 
pollen.  But  their  value  as  attractive  organs  for 
alluring  the  eyes  of  insects  more  than  counterbalanced 
this  slight  apparent  disadvantage  ;  and  the  new  petal- 
bearing  blossoms  soon  outstripped  and  utterly  lived 
down  all  their  simpler  petalless  allies.  By  devoting 
one  outer  row  of  stamens  to  the  function  of  alluring 
the  fertilising  flies,  they  have  secured  the  great 
benefit  of  perpetual  cross  fertilisation,  and  so  have  got 
the  better  of  all  their  less  developed  competitors.  At 
the  same  time,  the  exudations  at  the  base  of  the 
petals  have  assumed  the  definite  form  of  sweet  nectar 
or  honey,  a  liquid  which  is  mainly  composed  of  sugar, 
that  universal  allurer  of  animal  tastes.  By  this  means 
the  plants  save  their  pollen  from  depredations,  and 
at  the  same  time  offer  the  insects  a  more  effectual 
because  a  more  palatable  sort  of  bribe. 

Passing  rapidly  over  these  already  familiar  initial 
stages,  we  may  go  on  to  those  more  special  and  dis- 
tinctive facts  which  peculiarly  concern  the  ancestry  of 
the  lilies  and  cereals.  It  is  probable  that  the  nearest 
modern  analogue  of  the  earliest  petal-bearing  trinary 


140  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

flowers  is  to  be  found  in  the  existing  alisma  tribe, 
including  our  own  English  arrowheads  and  flowering 
rushes.  As  a  rule,  indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  fresh- 
water plants  and  animals  tend  to  preserve  for  us  very 
ancient  types  indeed  ;  and  all  the  alismas  are  marsh 
or  pond  flowers  of  an  extremely  simple  character. 
They  have  usually  three  greenish  sepals  outside  each 
blossom,  inclosing  one  whorl  of  three  white  or  pink 
petals,  two  or  three  whorls  of  three  stamens  each,  and 


Fig.  31. — Single  flower  of  Alisma  plantago. 

a  number  of  separate  ovaries,  which  are  not  united,  as 
in  the  more  developed  true  lilies,  into  a  single  capsule, 
but  remain  quite  distinct,  each  with  its  own  individual 
stigma  or  sensitive  surface.  Even  within  this  rela- 
tively early  and  simple  group,  however,  several  grada- 
tions of  development  may  yet  be  traced.  I  incline  to 
believe  that  our  English  smaller  alisma,  a  not  un- 
common plant  in  wet  ditches  and  marshes  throughout 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  141 

the  whole  of  southern  Britain,  represents  the  very 
earhest  petal-bearing  type  in  this  line  of  development ; 
indeed,  save  that  its  petals  are  now  pinky-white, 
while  those  of  the  original  ancestor  were  almost 
certainly  yellow,  we  might  almost  say  that  the  marsh- 
weed  in  question  was  really  the  earliest  petal-bearing 
plant  of  which  we  are  in  search.  It  closely  resembles 
in  appearance,  and  in  the  arrangement  of  its  parts, 
the  buttercups,  which  are  the  earliest  existing 
members  of  the  other  or  quinary  division  of  flowering 
plants  ;  and  in  both  we  seem  to  get  a  survival  of  a 
still  earlier  common  ancestor,  only  that  in  the  one  the 
parts  are  arranged  in  rows  of  three,  while  in  the  other 
they  are  arranged  in  rows  of  five  ;  and  concomitantly 
with  this  distinction  go  the  two  or  three  other  dis- 
tinctions which  mark  off  the  two  main  classes  from 
one  another — namely,  that  the  one  has  leaves  with 
parallel  veins,  only  one  seed-leaf  to  the  embryo,  and 
an  endogenous  stem,  while  the  other  has  leaves  with 
netted  veins,  two  seed-leaves  to  the  embryo,  and  an 
exogenous  stem.  Neverthless,  in  spite  of  such  funda- 
mental differences,  we  may  say  that  the  alismas  and 
the  buttercups  really  stand  very  close  to  one  another 
in  the  order  of  development.  When  the  two  main 
branches  of  flowering  plants  first  diverged  from  one 
another,  the  earliest  petal-bearing  form  they  produced 


142  Flowers  and  their  Pediorees. 

on  one  divergent  branch  was  the  alisma,  or  some- 
thing very  like  it  ;  the  earliest  petal-bearing  form 
they  produced  on  the  other  divergent  branch  was  the 
buttercup,  or  something  very  like  it.  Hence,  when- 
ever we  have  to  deal  with  the  pedigree  of  either  great 
line,  the  fixed  historical  point  from  which  we  must 
needs  set  out  must  always  be  the  typical  alismas  or 


a,  ovaries  ;  3,  stamens,  inner  whorl  ;  c,  stamens,  outer  whorl  ;  d,  petals 
e,  calyx -pieces. 

Fig.  32. — Diagram  of  primitive  monocotyledonous  flower. 

the  typical  buttercups.  The  accompanying  diagram 
will  show  at  once  the  relation  of  parts  in  the  simplest 
trinary  flowers,  and  will  serve  for  comparison  at  a 
later  stage  of  our  argument  with  the  arrangement  of 
their  degraded  descendants,  the  wheats  and  grasses. 

Our  own  smaller  alisma  has  a  number  of  ovaries 
loosely  scattered  about  in  its  centre,  as  in  the  butter- 


The  Origin  of  Wheat,  143 

cups,  with  two  rows  of  three  stamens  outside  them, 
and  then  a  single  row  of  three  petals,  followed  by  the 
calyx  or  inclosing  cup  of  three  green  pieces.  Its 
close  ally  the  water-plantain,  however,  shows  signs  of 
some  advance  towards  the  typical  lily  form  in  the 
arrangement  of  its  ovaries  in  a  single  ring,  often 
loosely  divisible  into  three  sets.  And  in  the  pretty 
pink  flowering  rush  (not  of  course  a  rush  at  all  in  the 
scientific  sense)  the  advance  is  still  more  marked  in 
that  the  number  of  ovaries  is  reduced  to  six,  that  is 
to  say,  two  whorls  of  three  each,  accompanied  by  nine 
stamens,  similarly  divisible  into  three  rows.  In  all 
these  very  early  forms  (as  in  their  analogues  the 
buttercups)  the  main  point  to  notice  is  this,  that  there 
is  as  yet  no  regular  definiteness  in  the  numerical 
relations  of  the  parts.  They  tend  to  run,  it  is  true, 
in  rows  of  three  ;  but  often  these  rows  are  so  numerous 
and  so  confused  that  nature  loses  count,  so  to  speak, 
and  it  is  only  in  their  higher  and  more  developed 
members  that  we  begin  to  arrive  at  any  distinct  sym- 
metry, such  as  that  of  the  flowering  rush.  Even  here, 
the  symmetry  is  far  from  being  so  perfect  as  in  the 
later  lilies.  There  are,  however,  a  few  very  special 
members  of  the  alisma  family  in  which  the  approach 
to  the  true  lilies  is  even  greater.  These  are  well 
represented  in  England  by  our  own  common  arrow- 


144  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

grasses  — inconspicuous  little  green  flowers,  with  three 
calyx-pieces,  three  petals,  six  stamens,  and  either  six 
or  three  ovaries.  Here,  too,  the  ovaries  are  at  first 
united  into  a  single  pistil  (as  it  is  technically  called), 
though  they  afterwards  separate  as  they  ripen  into 
three  or  six  distinct  little  capsules.  One  of  our 
British  kinds,  the  marsh  arrowgrass,  has  almost 
reached  the  lily  stage  of  development  ;  for  it  has 
three  calyx-pieces,  three  petals,  six  stamens,  and 
three  ovaries,  exactly  like  the  true  lilies  ;  but  it  falls 
short  of  their  full  type  in  the  fact  that  its  pistil 
divides  when  ripe  into  separate  capsules,  whereas  the 
pistil  of  the  lilies  always  remains  united  to  the  very 
end  ;  and  this  minute  difference  suffices,  in  the  eyes 
of  systematic  botanists,  to  make  it  an  alisma  rather 
than  a  lily.  In  reality,  it  ought  to  be  regarded  as  a 
benevolent  neutral — a  surviving  intermediate  link 
between  the  two  larger  classes. 

The  specialisation  which  makes  the  true  lilies  thus 
depends  upon  two  points.  In  the  first  place,  all  the 
parts  are  regularly  symmetrical,  except  that  there  are 
two  rows  of  stamens  to  each  one  of  the  other  organs : 
the  common  formula  being  three  calyx-pieces,  three 
petals,  six  stamens,  and  three  ovaries.  In  the  second 
place,  the  three  ovaries  are  completely  combined 
together  into  a  single  three-celled  pistil.     The  advan- 


The  Origin  of  Wheat. 


M5 


tage  which  the  lilies  thus  gain  is  obvious  enough. 
Their  bright  petals,  usually  larger  and  more  attrac- 
tive than  those  of  the  alismas,  allure  a  sufficient 
number  of  insects  to  enable  them  to  dispense  with 
the  numerous  stamens  and  ovaries  of  their  primitive 
ancestors.  Moreover,  this  diminution  in  number  is 
accompanied   by   an    increase   in    effectiveness    and 


Fig.  33. — Flower  of  White  Lily  and  section  of  ovary. 


specialisation  :  for  the  lilies  have  only  three  sensitive 
surfaces  to  their  pistil,  combined  on  a  single  stalk  : 
and  the  honey  is  usually  so  placed  at  its  base  that  the 
insect  cannot  fail  to  brush  off  pollen  at  every  visit 
against  all  three  surfaces  at  once.  Again,  while  the 
number  of  ovaries  has  been  lessened,  the  number  of 
seeds  in  each  has  been  generally  increased,  which  also 


146  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

marks  a  step  in  advance,  since  it  allows  many  seeds 
to  be  impregnated  by  a  single  act  of  pollination.  The 
result  of  all  these  improvements,  carried  further  by 
some  lilies  than  by  others,  is  that  the  family  has 
absolutely  outstripped  all  others  of  the  trinary  class 
in  the  race  for  the  possession  of  the  earth,  and  has 
now  occupied  all  the  most  favourable  positions  in 
every  part  of  the  world.  While  the  alismas  and  their 
allies  have  been  so  crowded  out  that  they  now  linger 
only  in  a  few  ponds,  marshes,  and  swamps,  to  which 
the  more  recent  lily  tribe  have  not  yet  had  time 
fully  to  adapt  themselves,  the  true  lilies  and  their  yet 
more  advanced  descendants  have  taken  seizin  of 
every  climate  and  every  zone  upon  our  planet,  and 
are  to  be  found  in  every  possible  position,  from 
the  arborescent  yuccas  and  huge  agaves  of  the 
tropics  to  the  wild  hyacinths  of  our  English  wood- 
lands and  the  graceful  asphodels  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean hill-sides. 

The  lilies  themselves,  again,  do  not  all  stand  on 
one  plane  of  homogeneous  evolution.  There  are 
different  grades  of  development  still  surviving  among 
the  class  itself.  The  little  yellow  gagea  (fig.  34)  which 
grows  sparingly  in  sandy  English  fields  may  betaken 
as  a  very  fair  representative  of  the  simplest  and  earliest 
true  lily  type.     It  bears  a  small  bunch  of  little  golden 


The  Origin  of  Wheat. 


H7 


flowers,  only  to  be  distinguished  from  the  higher 
ahsmas  by  their  united  ovaries :  for  though  both 
calyx  and  petals  are  here  brightly  coloured,  that  is 
also  the  case  in  the  flowering  rushes,  and  in  many 
others  of  the  alisma  group. 
On  the  other  hand,  though 
it  may  be  said  generally  of 
the  lilies  that  their  calyx  and 
petals  are  coloured  alike — 
sometimes  so  much  so  as  to 
be  practically  indistinguish- 
able— yet  there  are  many 
kinds  which  still  retain  the 
greenish  calyx  -  pieces,  and 
that  even  in  the  more  de- 
veloped genera.  But  most  of 
the  lilies  are  far  handsomer 
than  gagea  and  its  allies  :  even 
in  England  itself  we  have  such  very  conspicuous  and 
attractive  flowers  as  the  purple  fritillaries,  which  every 
Oxford  man  has  gathered  by  handfuls  in  the  spongy 
meadows  about  Ififley  lock, -with  their  dark  spotted 
petals  converging  into  a  bell,  and  the  nectaries  at  the 
base  producing  each  a  large  drop  of  luscious  honey. 
Some,  like  our  wild  hyacinths,  have  assumed  a 
tubular   shape  under   stress   of  insect  selection,  the 


Fig.  34. — Gagea  lutea. 


i|8  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

better  to  promote  proper  fertilisation  ;  and  at  the 
same  time  have  acquired  a  blue  pigment,  to  allure  the 
eyes  of  azure-loving  bees.  Others  have  become 
dappled  with  spots  to  act  as  honey-guides,  or  have 
produced  brilliant  variegated  blossoms  to  attract  the 
attention  of  great  tropical  insects.  .  Our  British  lilies 
alone  comprise  such  various  examples  as  the  lily-of- 
the-valley,  a  tubular  white  scented  species,  adapted 
for  fertilisation  by  moths  ;  the  very  similar  Solomon's 
seal  ;  the  butcher's  broom  ;  the  wild  tulip  ;  the  star-of- 
Bethlehem  ;  the  various  squills  ;  the  asparagus  ;  the' 
grape  hyacinth  ;  and  the  meadow  saffron.  Some  of 
them  (for  example,  asparagus  and  butcher's  broom) 
have  also  developed  berries  in  place  of  dry  capsules  ; 
and  these  berries,  being  eaten  by  birds  which  digest 
the  pulp,  but  not  the  actual  seeds,  aid  in  the  disper- 
sion of  the  seedlings,  and  so  enable  the  plant  to 
reduce  the  total  number  of  seeds  to  three  only,  or 
one  in  each  ovary.  Among  familiar  exotics  of  the 
same  family  may  be  mentioned  the  hyacinth,  tube- 
rose, tulip,  asphodel,  yucca,  and  most  of  the  so-called 
lilies.  In  short,  no  tribe  supplies  us  with  a  greater 
number  of  handsome  garden  flowers,  for  the  most 
part  highly  adapted  to  a  very  advanced  type  of  insect 
fertilisation. 

Properly  to  understand  the  development  of  our 


The  Origin  of  Wheat,  149 

existing  wheat  from  this  brilliant  and  ornamental 
family,  as  well  as  to  realise  the  true  nature  of  its 
relation  to  allied  orders,  we  must  first  glance  briefly 
at  the  upward  evolution  of  the  other  branches  de- 
scended from  the  true  lilies,  and  then  recur  to  the 
downward  evolution  which  finally  resulted  in  the 
production  of  the  degenerate  grasses.  In  the  main 
line  of  progressive  development,  the  lilies  gave  origin 
to  the  amaryllids,  familiarly  represented  in  England 
by  the  snowdrops  and  daffodils,  a  family  which  is 
technically  described  as  differing  from  the  lilies  in 
having  an  inferior  instead  of  a  superior  ovary — that  is 
to  say,  with  the  pistil  apparently  placed  below  instead 
of  above  the  point  where  the  petals  and  calyx-pieces 
are  inserted.  From  the  evolutionary  point  of  view, 
however,  this  difference  (as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  the 
goose-grasses)  merely  amounts  to  saying  that  the 
amaryllids  are  tubular  lilies,  in  which  the  tube  has 
coalesced  with  the  walls  of  the  ovary,  so  that  the 
petals  seem  to  begin  at  its  summit  instead  of  at  its 
base.  The  change  gives  still  greater  certainty  of 
impregnation,  and  therefore  benefits  the  race  accord- 
ingly. At  the  same  time,  the  amaryllids,  being 
probably  a  much  newer  development  than  the  true 
lilies,  have  not  yet  had  leisure  to  gain  quite  so  firm  a 
footing  in  the  world  ;  though  on  the  other  hand  many 


150  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

of  them  are  far  more  minutely  adapted  for  special 
insect  fertilisation  than  their  earlier  allies.  They 
include  the  so-called  Guernsey  lilies  of  our  gardens, 
as  well  as  the  huge  American  aloes  which  all  visitors 
to  the  Riviera  know  so  well  on  the  dry  hills  around 
Nice  and  Cannes.  The  iris  family  are  a  similar  but 
rather  more  advanced  tribe,  with  only  three  stamens 
instead  of  six,  their  superior  organisation  allowing 
them  readily  to  dispense  with  half  their  complement, 
and  so  to  attain  the  perfect  trinary  symmetry  of  three 
sepals,  three  petals,  three  stamens,  and  three  ovaries. 
Among  them,  the  iris  and  the  crocus  are  circular  in 
shape,  but  some  very  advanced  types,  such  as  the 
gladiolus,  have  acquired  a  bilateral  form,  in  correla- 
tion with  special  insect  visits.  From  these,  the  step 
is  not  great  to  the  orchids,  undoubtedly  the  highest 
of  all  the  trinary  flowers,  with  the  triple  arrangement 
almost  entirely  obscured,  and  with  the  most  extra- 
ordinary varieties  of  adaptation  to  fertilisation  by 
bees  or  even  by  humming-birds  in  the  most  marvel- 
lous fashions.  Alike  by  their  inferior  ovary,  their 
bilateral  shape,  their  single  stamen,  their  remarkable 
forms,  their  brilliant  colours,  and  their  occasional 
mimicry  of  insect  life,  the  orchids  show  themselves 
to  be  by  far  the  highest  of  the  trinary  flowers,  if  not, 
indeed,  of  the  entire  vegetable  world. 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  151 

From  this  brief  sketch  of  the  main  Hne  of  upward 
evolution  from  HHes  to  orchids,  we  must  now  return 
to  the  grand  junction  afforded  us  by  the  Hhes  them- 
selves, and  travel  down  the  other  line  of  degeneracy 
and  degradation  which  leads  us  on  to  the  grasses  and 
the  cereals,  including  at  last  our  own  familiar  culti- 
vated wheat.  Any  trinary  flower  with  three  calyx - 
pieces,  three  petals,  six  stamens,  and  a  three-celled 
pistil  not  concealed  within  an  inclosing  tube,  is  said 
to  be  a  lily,  as  long  as  it  possesses  brightly  coloured 
and  delicate  petals.  There  are,  however,  a  large 
number  of  somewhat  specialised  lilies  with  very  small 
and  inconspicuous  petals,  which  have  been  artificially 
separated  by  botanists  as  the  rush  family,  not  because 
they  were  really  different  in  any  important  point  of 
structure  from  the  acknowledged  lilies,  but  merely 
because  they  had  not  got  such  brilliant  and  handsome 
blossoms.  These  despised  and  neglected  plants,  how- 
ever, supply  us  with  the  first  downward  step  on  the 
path  of  degeneracy  which  leads  at  last  to  the  grasses, 
and  they  may  be  considered  as  intermediate  stages  in 
the  scale  of  degradation,  fortunately  preserved  for  us 
by  exceptional  circumstances  to  the  present  day. 
Even  among  the  true  lilies,  there  are  some,  like  the 
garlic  and  onion  tribe,  which  show  considerable  marks 
of  degeneration,  owing  to  some  decline  from  the  type 


152  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

of  insect  fertilisation  to  the  undesirable  habit  of 
fertilising  themselves.  Thus,  while  our  common 
English  rampsons  or  wild  garlic  has  pretty  ajid  con- 
spicuous white  blossoms,  some  other  members  of  the 
tribe,  such  as  the  crow  allium,  have  very  small 
greenish  flowers,  often  reduced  to  mere  shapeless 
bulbs.  Among  the  true  rushes,  however,  the  course 
of  development  has  been  somewhat  different.  These 
water-weeds  have  acquired  the  habit  of  trusting  for 
fertilisation  to  the  wind,  which  carries  the  pollen  of 
one  blossom  to  the  sensitive  surface  of  another,  per- 
haps at  less  trouble  and  expense  to  the  parent  plant 
than  would  be  necessary  for  the  allurement  of  bees 
or  flies  by  all  the  bribes  of  brilliant  petals  and 
honeyed  secretions.  To  effect  this  object,  their 
stamens  hang  out  pensile  to  the  breeze,  on  long 
slender  filaments,  so  lightly  poised  that  the  merest 
breath  of  air  amply  suffices  to  dislodge  the  pollen  : 
whib  the  sensitive  surface  of  the  ovaries  is  prolonged 
into  a  branched  and  feathery  process,  seen  under  the 
microscope  to  be  studded  with  adhesive  glandular 
knobs,  which  readily  catch  and  retain  every  golden 
grain  of  the  fertilising  powder  which  may  chance  to 
be  wafted  toward  them  on  the  wings  of  the  wind. 
Under  such  circumstances,  the  rush  kind  could  only 
lose  by   possessing   brightly  coloured  and  attractive 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  153 


petals,  which  would  induce  insects  uselessly  to 
plunder  their  precious  stores  :  and  so  all  those  rushes 
which  showed  any  tendency  in  that  direction  would 
soon  be  weeded  out  by  natural  selection  ;  while  those 
which  produced  only  dry  and  inconspicuous  petals 
would  become  the  parents  of  future  generations,  and 
would  hand  on  their  own  peculiarities  to  their  de- 
scendants after  them.  Thus  the  existing  rushes  are 
all  plain  little  lilies  with  dry  brownish  flowers,  speci- 
ally adapted  to  wind-fertilisation  alone. 

Among  the  rushes  themselves,  again,  there  are 
various  levels  of  retrogressive  development — retro- 
gressive, that  is  to  say,  if  we  regard  the  lily  family 
as  an  absolute  standard  ;  for  the  various  alterations 
undergone  by  the  different  flowers  are  themselves 
adaptive  to  their  new  condition,  though  that  condition 
is  itself  decidedly  lower  than  the  one  from  which  they 
started.  The  common  rush  and  its  immediate  con- 
geners resemble  the  lilies  from  which  they  spring  in 
having  several  seeds  in  each  of  the  three  cells  which 
compose  their  pistil.  But  there  is  an  interesting 
group  of  small  grass-like  plants,  known  as  wood- 
rushes,  which  combine  all  the  technical  characteristics 
of  the  true  rushes  with  a  general  character  extremely 
like  that  of  the  grasses.  They  have  long,  thin,  grass- 
like blades  in  the  place  of  leaves  ;  and  what  is  still 
11 


154  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

more  important,  as  indicating  an  approach  to  the 
essentially  one-seeded  grass  tribe,  they  have  only 
three  seeds  in  the  flower,  one  to  each  cell  of  the 
capsule.  These  seeds  are  comparatively  large,  and 
are  richly  stored  with  food- stuffs  for  the  supply  of  the 
young  plantlet.  One  such  richly  supplied  embryo 
is  worth  many  little  unsupported  grains,  since  it 
stands  a  much  better  chance  than  they  do  of  surviv- 


FiG.  35. — Single  flower  of  Woodrush. 

ing  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  The  wood-rushes 
may  thus  be  regarded  as  some  of  the  earliest  plants 
among  the  great  trinary  class  to  adopt  those  tactics 
of  storing  gluten,  starch,  and  other  food-stuffs  along 
with  the  embryo,  which  have  given  the  cereals  their 
acknowledged  superiority  as  producers  of  human  food. 
They  are  closely  connected  with  the  rushes,  on  the 
one  hand,  by  sundry  intermediate  species  which 
possess  thin  leaves  instead  of  cylindrical  pithy  blades  ; 


The  Origin  of  Wheat,  155 

and  they  lead  on  to  the  grasses,  on  the  other,  by 
reason  of  their  very  grass- like  foliage,  and  their  re- 
duced number  of  large,  well-furnished,  starchy  seeds. 

In  another  particular,  the  rush  family  supplies  us 
with  a  useful  hint  in  tracing  out  the  pedigree  of  the 
grasses  and  cereals.  Their  flowers  are  for  the  most 
part  crowded  together  in  large  tufts  or  heads,  each 
containing  a  considerable  number  of  minute  separate 
blossoms.  Even  among  the  true  lilies  we  find  some 
cases  of  such  crowding  in  the  hyacinths  and  the 
squills,  or  still  better  in  the  onion  and  garlic  tribe. 
But  with  the  wind-fertilised  rushes,  the  grouping 
together  of  the  flowers  has  important  advantages, 
because  it  enables  the  pollen  more  easily  to  fix  upon 
one  or  other  of  the  sensitive  surfaces,  as  the  stalks 
sway  backward  and  forward  before  a  gentle  breeze. 
Among  yet  more  developed  or  degraded  wind-fertil- 
ised plants,  this  crowding  of  the  blossoms  becomes 
even  more  conspicuous.  A  common  American  rush- 
like water-plant,  known  as  eriocaulon,  helps  us  to 
bridge  over  the  gap  between  the  rushes  and  such 
compound  flowers  as  the  sedges  and  grasses.  Erio- 
caulon and  its  allies  have  always  one  seed  only  in  each 
cell  of  the  pistil :  and  they  have  also  generally  a  very 
delicate  corolla  and  calyx,  of  from  four  to  six  pieces, 
representing  the  original  three  sepals  and  three  petals 


156  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

of  the  lilies  and  rushes.  But  their  minute  blossoms 
are  closely  crowded  together  in  globular  heads,  the 
stamens  and  pistils  being  here  divided  in  separate 
flowers,  though  both  kinds  of  flowers  are  combined  in 
each  head.  From  an  ancestral  form  not  unlike  this, 
but  still  more  like  the  wood  rushes,  we  must  get  both 
our  sedges  and  our  grasses.  And  though  the  sedges 
themselves  do  not  stand  in  the  direct  line  of  descent 
to  wheat  and  the  other  cereals,  they  are  yet  so  valuable 
as  an  illustration  from  their  points  of  analogy  and  of 
difference  that  we  must  turn  aside  for  a  moment  to 
examine  the  gradual  course  of  their  evolution. 

The  simplest  and  most  primitive  sedges  now 
surviving,  though  very  degenerate  in  type,  yet  retain 
some  distinct  traces  of  their  derivation  from  earlier 
rush-like  and  lily-like  ancestors.  In  the  earliest  exist- 
ing type,  known  as  scirpus,  the  calyx  and  petals  which 
were  brightly  coloured  in  the  lilies,  and  which  were 
reduced  to  six  brown  scales  in  the  rushes,  have  under- 
gone a  further  degradation  to  the  form  of  six  small 
dry  bristles,  which  now  merely  remain  as  rudimentary 
relics  of  a  once  useful  and  beautiful  structure.  In 
some  species  of  scirpus,  too,  the  number  of  these 
bristles  is  reduced  from  six  to  four  or  three.  There 
is  still  one  whorl  of  three  stamens,  however  ;  but  the 
second  whorl  has  disappeared  ;    while  the  pistil  now 


The  Grigiii  of  Wheat. 


'57 


contains  only  one  seed  instead  of  three  ;  though  it 
still  retains  some  trace  of  the  original  three  cells  in 
the  fact  that  there  are  three  sensitive  surfaces,  united 
together  at  their  base  into  one  stalk  or  style.  Each 
such  diminution  in  the  number  of  seeds  is  always 
accompanied  by  an  increase  in  the  effectiveness  of 
those  which  remain  ;  the  difference  is  just  analogous 
to  that  between  the  myriad  ill-provided  eggs  of  the 


Fig.  36. 
Single  flower  of  Scirpus. 


Fig.  37. 
Male  and  Female  flower  of  Carex. 


cod,  whose  young  fry  are  for  the  most  part  snapped 
up  as  soon  as  hatched,  and  the  two  or  three  eggs  of 
birds,  which  watch  their  brood  with  such  tender  care, 
or  the  single  young  of  cows,  horses,  and  elephants, 
which  guard  their  calves  or  foals  almost  up  to  the 
age  of  full  maturity.  What  the  bird  or  the  animal 
effects  by  constant  feeding  with  worms  or  milk,  the 


158  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

plant  effects  by  storing    its  seed  with  assorted  food 
stuffs  for  the  sprouting  embryo. 

In  the  more  advanced  or  more  degenerate  sedges 
we  get  still  further  differentiation  for  the  special 
function  of  wind-fertilisation.  Take,  as  an  example 
of  these  most  developed  types  on  this  line  of  develop- 
ment, the  common  English  group  of  carices  (fig.  37). 
In  these,  the  flowers  have  absolutely  lost  all  trace  of 
a  perianth  (that  is  to  say,  of  the  calyx  and  petals),  for 
they  do  not  possess  even  the  six  diminutive  bristles 
which  form  the  last  relics  of  those  organs  in  their 
allies,  the  scirpus  group.  Each  flower  is  either  male 
or  female — that  is  to  say,  it  consists  of  stamens  or 
ovaries  alone.  The  male  flowers  are  represented  by 
a  single  scale  or  bract,  inclosing  three  stamens  ;  and 
in  some  species  even  the  stamens  are  reduced  to  a 
pair,  so  that  all  trace  of  the  original  trinary  arrange- 
ment is  absolutely  lost.  The  female  flowers  are 
represented  by  a  single  ovary,  inclosed  in  a  sort  of 
loose  bag,  which  may  perhaps  be  the  final  rudiment 
of  a  tubular  bell-shaped  corolla  like  that  of  the 
hyacinth.  This  ovary  contains  a  single  seed,  but  its 
shape  is  often  triangular,  and  it  has  usually  three 
stigmas  or  sensitive  surfaces,  thus  dimly  pointing 
back  to  the  three  distinct  cells  of  its  lily-like  ances- 
tors, and  the  three  separate  ovaries  of  its  still  earlier 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  159 


alisma-like  progenitors.  In  many  species,  however, 
even  this  last  souvenir  of  the  trinary  type  has  been 
utterly  obliterated,  the  ovary  having  only  two 
stigmas,  and  assuming  a  flattened  two-sided  shape. 
In  all  the  carices,  the  flowers  are  loosely  arranged 
in  compact  spikes  and  spikelets,  with  their  mobile 
stamens  hanging  out  freely  to  the  breeze,  and  their 
feathery  stigmas  prepared  to  catch  the  slightest  grain 
of  pollen  which  may  happen  to  be  wafted  their  way 
by  any  passing  breath  of  air.  The  varieties  in  their 
arrangement,  however,  are  almost  as  infinite  among 
the  different  species  as  those  of  the  grasses  them- 
selves ;  sometimes  the  male  and  female  flowers  are 
produced  on  separate  plants  ;  sometimes  they  grow 
in  separate  spikes  on  the  same  plant ;  sometimes  the 
same  spike  has  male  flowers  at  the  top  and  female  at 
the  bottom  ;  sometimes  the  various  flowers  are  mixed 
up  with  one  another  at  top  and  bottom  in  a  regular 
hotch-potch  of  higgledy-piggledy  confusion.  But  all 
the  sedges  alike  are  very  grass-like  in  their  aspect, 
with  thin  blades  by  way  of  leaves,  and  blossoms  on 
tall  heads  as  in  the  grasses.  In  fact,  the  two  families 
are  never  accurately  distinguished  by  any  except 
technical  botanists  ;  to  the  ordinary  observer,'  they 
are  all  grasses  together,  without  petty  distinctions  of 
genus  and  species.     Like  the  grasses,  too,  the  sedges 


t6o  Flozuers  and  their  Pedio-reps. 


are  mostly  plants  of  the  open  wind-swept  plains  or 
marshy  levels,  where  the  facilities  for  wind-fertilisa- 
tion are  greatest  and  most  constantly  present' 

And  now,  from  this  illustrative  digression,  let  us 
hark  back  again  to  the  junction  point  of  the  rushes, 
whence  alike  the  sedges  and  the  grasses  appear  to 
diverge.  In  order  to  understand  the  nature  of  the 
steps  by  which  the  cereals  have  been  developed  from 
rush-like  ancestors,  it  will  be  necessary  to  look  shortly 
at  the  actual  composition  of  the  flower  in  grasses, 
which  is  the  only  part  of  their  organism  differing 
appreciably  from  the  ordinary  lily  type.  The  blossoms 
of  grasses,  in  their  simplest  form,  consist  of  several 
little  green  florets,  arranged  in  small  clusters,  known 
as  spikelets,  along  a  single  common  axis.  Of  this 
arrangement,  the  head  of  wheat  itself  offers  a  familiar 
and  excellent  example.  If  we  pull  to  pieces  one  of  the 
spikelets  composing  such  a  head,  we  find  it  to  consist 
of  four  or  five  distinct  florets.  Omitting  special  fea- 
tures and  unnecessary  details,  we  may  say  that  each 
floret  is  made  up  of  two  chaffy  scales  {e,  d),  known  as 
pales,  and  representing  the  calyx,  together  with  a  pair 

'  The  sedges  are  not,  in  all  probability,  a  real  natural  famil}',  but 
are  a  group  of  heterogeneous  degraded  lilies,  containing  almost  all  those 
kinds  in  which  the  reduced  florets  are  covered  by  a  single  conspicuous 
glume-like  bract.  It  will  be  seen  from  the  sequel  that  these  bracts  are 
not  truly  homologous  to  the  glumes  or  outer  palea:  of  grasses. 


The  Origin  of  Wheat. 


i6i 


of  small  white  petals  {c)  known  as  lodicules,  three 
stamens  {b),  and  an  ovary  with  two  feathery  styles  {a). 
Moreover,  the  two  pales  or  calyx-pieces  are  not 
similar  and  symmetrical,  for  the  outer  one  {e)  is  sim- 
ple and  convex,  while  the  inner  one  {d)  is  apparently 
double,  being  made  up  of  two  pieces  rolled  into  one, 
and  still  possessing  two  green   midribs,  which  show 


Fig.  38. 
Details  of  flower  of  Wheat. 


Fig.  39, 
Flower  of  Wheat  (g.umes  removed). 


distinctly  like  ribs  on  its  flat  outer  surface.  Here,  it 
will  immediately  be  apparent,  the  traces  of  the  original 
trinary  arrangement  are  very  slight  indeed. 

But  when  we  come  to  inquire  into  the  rationale 
and  genesis  of  these  curiously  one-sided  flowers,  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see  that  they  have  been  ultimately 


1 62  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

derived  from  trinary  blossoms  of  the  rush-like  type. 
The  first  and  most  marked  divergence  from  that  type, 
for  which  the  analogy  of  the  sedges  has  already  pre- 
pared us,  is  the  reduction  of  the  ovary  to  a  single  one- 
seeded  cell,  whose  ripe  fruity  form  is  known  as  a 
grain.  At  one  time,  we  may  feel  pretty  sure,  there 
must  have  existed  a  group  of  nascent  grasses,  which 
only  differed  from  the  wood-rush  genus  in  having  a 
single-celled  ovary  instead  of  a  three-celled  pistil  with 
one  seed  in  each  cell  ;  and  even  the  ovary  of  this 
primitive  grass  must  have  retained  one  mark  of  its 
trinary  origin  in  its  possession  of  three  styles  to  its 
one  grain,  thus  pointing  back  (as  most  sedges  still  do) 
to  its  earlier  rush-like  origin.  That  hypothetical  form 
must  have  had  three  sepals,  three  petals,  six  stamens, 
and  one  three-styled  ovary.  But  the  peculiar  shape 
of  modern  grass-flowers  is  clearly  due  to  their  very 
spiky  arrangement  along  the  edge  of  the  axis.  In  the 
wood-rushes  and  the  sedges,  we  see  some  approach  to 
this  condition  ;  but  in  the  grasses,  the  crowding  is  far 
more  marked,  and  the  one-sidedness  has  accordingly 
become  far  more  conspicuous.  Suppose  we  begin  to 
crowd  a  number  of  wind-fertilised  lily-like  flowers 
along  an  axis  in  this  manner,  taking  care  that  the 
stamens  and  the  sensitive  feathery  styles  are  always 
turned  outward  to  catch  the  breeze  (for  otherwise  they 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  163 

will   die  out  at  once),  what  sort  of  result  shall  we 
finally  get  ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  calyx,  consisting  of  three 
pieces,  will  stand  towards  the  crowded  stem  or  axis  in 
such  a  fashion  that  one  piece  will  be  free  and  exterior, 
while  two  pieces  will  be  interior  and  next  the  stem, 
thus — 


Now,  the  effect  of  constant  crushing  in  this  direction 
will  be  that  the  two  inner  calyx-pieces  will  be  slowly 
dwarfed,  and  will  tend  to  coalesce  with  one  another  ; 
and  this  is  what  has  actually  happened  with  the  inner 
pale  of  wheat  and  of  other  grasses,  though  the  mid- 
ribs of  the  two  originally  separate  pieces  still  show 
on  the  compound  pale,  like  dark  green  lines  down  its 
centre.  Thus,  in  the  fully  developed  grasses,  in  place 
of  a  trinary  calyx,  we  get  two  chaffy  scales  or  pales, 
the  outer  one  representing  a  single  sepal,  and  the 
inner  one,  which  has  been  dwarfed  by  pressure 
against  the  stem,  representing  two  sepals  rolled  into 
one,  with  two  midribs  still  remaining  as  evidence  of 
their  original  distinctness. 

Next,  in  the  case  of  the  petals,  which  alternate 
with  the  sepals  of  the  calyx,  the  relation  to  the  stem 
is  exactly  reversed  ;  for  we  have  here  two  petals  free 


164  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

and  exterior,  with  one  interior  petal  crowded  closely 

against  the  axis,  thus — 

O 


Here,  then,  the  two  external  petals  will  be  saved, 
exactly  as  the  one  external  sepal  was  saved  in  the 
case  of  the  calyx  ;  and  these  two  petals  are  repre- 
sented by  the  very  small  white  lodicules  under  the 
outer  pale  in  our  existing  wheats  and  grasses.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  inner  petal,  jammed  in  between  the 
grain  and  the  inner  pale  (with  the  stem  at  its  back), 
has  been  utterly  crushed  out  of  existence,  partly 
because  of  its  very  small  size,  partly  because  of  its 
functional  uselessness,  and  partly  because  it  had  no 
other  part  with  which  to  coalesce,  and  so  to  save  itself 
as  the  inner  sepals  had  managed  to  do.  Moreover,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  sepals  do  still  perform 
a  useful  service  in  protecting  the  young  flower  before 
it  opens,  and  in  keeping  out  noxious  insects  during 
the  kerning  or  swelling  of  the  grain  ;  whereas  the 
lodicules  or  rudimentary  petals  are  now  apparently 
quite  functionless  ;  and  so  we  may  congratulate  our- 
selves that  they  are  there  at  all,  to  preserve  for  us 
the  true  ground-plan  of  the  floral  architecture  in 
grasses.  Indeed,  they  have  not  survived  by  any 
means  in  all  grasses  :  among  the  smaller  and   more 


The  Origin  of  Wheat,  165 

degraded  kinds  they  are  often  wholly  wanting,  having 
been  quite  crushed  out  between  the  calyx  and  the 
grain.  It  is  only  the  larger  and  more  primitive  types 
that  still  exhibit  them  in  any  great  perfection.  On 
the  other  hand,  one  group  of  very  large  exotic  grasses, 
the  bamboos,  has  three  regular  petals,  thus  clearly 
showing  the  descent  of  the  family  as  a  whole  from 
rush-like  ancestors,  and  also  obviously  suggesting 
that  the  obsolescence  of  the  inner  petal  in  the  other 
grasses  is  due  to  their  small  size  and  their  closely 
packed  minute  flowers. 

Among  the  stamens,  one-sidedness  has  not  notably 
established  itself,  for  in  wind-fertilised  plants  they 
must  necessarily  hang  out  freely  to  the  breeze,  and 
therefore  they  do  not  get  much  crowded  between  the 
other  parts.  A  few  grasses  still  even  retain  their 
double  row  of  stamens,  having  six  to  each  floret  ;  but 
most  of  them  have  only  one  whorl  of  three.  In  some 
of  the  lower  and  more  degraded  forms,  however,  even 
the  stamens  have  lost  their  trinary  order,  and  only 
two  now  survive.  This  is  the  case  in  our  own  very 
degenerate  little  sweet-vernal-grass,  the  plant  which 
imparts  its  delicious  fragrance  to  new-mown  hay. 
But  in  the  cereals  and  in  most  other  large  species  the 
three  stamens  still  remain  in  undiminished  effective- 
ness to  the  present  day. 


1 66  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


Finally  we  come  to  the  most  important  part  of  all, 
the  ovary.  This  part,  alternating  with  the  stamens, 
has  the  same  arrangement  of  styles  relatively  to  the 
axis  as  in  the  case  of  the  petals  ;  and  it  has  under- 
gone precisely  the  same  sort  of  abortive  distortion. 
The  two  outer  styles,  hanging  freely  out  of  the  calyx, 
have  been  preserved  like  the  two  outer  lodicules  ;  but 
the  inner  one,  pressed  between  the  grain  and  the 
inner  pale  (with  the  stem  behind  it)  has  been  simply 
crushed  out  of  existence,  like  its  neighbour  the  inner 
lodicule. 

Thus  the  final  result  is  that  the  whole  inner  por- 
tion of  the  flower  (except  as  regards  stamens)  has 
been  distorted  or  rendered  abortive  by  close  pressure 
against  the  stem  (due  to  the  crowding  of  the  florets 
in  the  spiky  form),  while  the  whole  outer  portion 
remains  normal  and  fully  developed.  We  have 
an  outer  pale  representing  a  single  normal  sepal, 
and  an  inner  pale  representing  two  dwarfed  and 
united  sepals  ;  we  have  two  normal  outer  lodicules 
or  petals,  and  a  blank  where  the  inner  petal  ought  to 
be  ;  we  have  three  stamens,  symmetrically  arranged, 
among  the  faithless  faithful  only  found  ;  and  we 
have  finally  two  normal  outer  styles,  with  a 
blank  in  place  of  the  absent  inner  style.  The 
accompanying   diagram,  compared  with  that  of  the 


The  Origin  of  Wheat. 


167 


primitive    monocotyledon    (fig.    32),  will    make   this 
perfectly  clear. 


Fig.  40.— Diagram  of  Wheat  flower. 

Here,  ^^  represents  the  outer  pale  or  normal  sepal, 
while  a^  and  a^  represent  the  inner  pale  composed  of 
the  tw©  united  sepals.  Again,  b^  and  U"  stand  for  the 
two  lodicules  or  surviving  petals,  while  b"^  marks  the 
place  of  the  lost  petal,  now  found  in  the  bamboos 
alone.  The  stamens  are  lettered  c\  c^,  and  rl  The 
two  existing  styles  are  shown  by  d^  and  d"",  while  d^ 
marks  the  abortive  inner  style,  now  not  even  present 
in  a  rudimentary  condition.  It  will  be  observed  at 
once  that  all  the  outer  side  is  normal,  and  all  the  inner 
side  more  or  less  abortive  through  pressure  against 
the  axis. 

Thus  it. will  be  seen  that  the  line  of  links  which 


1 6^  Flowei^s  and  their  Pedigirces. 


connects  the  grasses  and  cereals  with  the  Hlies  is 
absolutely  unbroken,  and  that  it  consists  throughout 
of  one  continuous  course  of  degradation.  At  the  same 
time,  by  this  one-sided  and  spiky  arrangement,  the 
grasses  secured  for  themselves  an  exceptional  advan- 
tage in  the  struggle  for  existence.  No  other  race  of 
small  wind-fertilised  plants  could  compete  with  them 
for  the  possession  of  the  open  wind-swept  plains  ;  and 
over  all  these  they  spread  far  and  wide,  rapidly  dif- 
ferentiating themselves  into  a  vast  number  of  divergent 
genera  and  species,  each  adaptively  specialised  for 
some  peculiar  habitat,  soil,  or  climate.  At  the  present 
time,  the  grasses  number  their  kinds  by  thousands  ; 
they  extend  over  the  whole  world  from  the  poles  to 
the  equator  ;  and  they  form  the  general  sward  or 
carpet  of  greenery  over  by  far  the  larger  portion  of  the 
terrestrial  globe.  Even  in  Britain  alone,  with  our  poor 
little  insular  flora,  a  mere  fragment  of  that  belonging  to 
the  petty  European  continent,  we  number  no  less  than 
forty-two  genera  of  grasses,  distributed  into  more  than 
one  hundred  species.  In  fact,  what  may  fairly  be 
called  degradation  from  one  point  of  view  may  fairly 
be  called  adaptation  from  another.  The  organisation 
of  the  grasses  is  certainly  lower  than  that  of  the  lilies, 
but  it  fits  them  better  for  that  station  of  life  to  which 
it  has  pleased  nature  to  assign  them. 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  169 

The  various  kinds  of  grasses  differ  very  little  from 
one  another  in  general  plan  ;  the  flower  in  almost  all 
is  constructed  strictly  on  the  lines  above  mentioned  ; 
and  the  leaves  in  almost  all  are  just  the  same  soft 
pensile  blades,  making  them  into  the  proper  green 
sward  for  open,  unwooded,  wind-swept  plains.  But 
like  almost  all  other  very  dominant  families,  they 
have  split  up  into  an  immense  number  of  kinds,  dis- 
tinguished from  one  another  by  minute  differences  in 
the  arrangement  of  the  florets  and  the  spikelets  ;  and 
these  kinds  have  again  subdivided  into  more  and  more 
minutely  different  genera  and  species.  One  great 
group,  with  panicles  of  a  loose  character,  and  very 
degraded  spikelets,  has  given  origin  to  many  southern 
grasses,  from  some  of  which  the  cultivated  millets  are 
derived.  Another  great  group,  with  usually  more 
spiky  inflorescence,  has  given  origin  to  most  of  our 
northern  grasses,  from  some  of  which  the  common 
cereals  are  derived.  This  second  group  has  again  split 
up  into  several  others,  of  which  the  important  one 
for  our  present  purpose  is  that  of  the  Hordeine^,  or 
barley-worts.  From  one  of  the  numerous  genera  into 
which  the  primitive  Hordeineae  have  once  more  split 
up,  our  cultivated  barleys  take  their  rise  ;  from  another, 
which  here  demands  further  attention,   we   get  our 

cultivated  wheats. 
13 


170  Floivcrs  and  their  Pedigj^ces. 

The  nearest  form  to  true  wheat  now  found  wild  in 
the  British  Islesjs  the  creeping  couch-grass, a  perennial 
closely  agreeing  in  all  essential  particulars  of  structure 
with  our  cultivated  annual  wheats.  But  in  the  south 
European  region  we  find  in  abundance  a  large  series 
of  common  wild  annual  grasses,  forming  the  genus 
yEgilops  of  technical  botany,  and  exactly  resembling 
true  wheat  in  every  point  except  the  size  of  the  grain. 
One  species  of  this  genus,  ^gilops  ovata,  a  small,  hard, 
wiry  annual,  is  now  pretty  generally  recognised  among 
botanists  as  the  parent  of  our  cultivated  corn.  There 
was  a  good  reason,  indeed,  why  primitive  man,  when 
he  first  began  to  select  and  rudely  till  a  few  seeds  for 
his  own  use,  should  have  specially  affected  the  grass 
tribe.  No  other  family  of  plants  has  seeds  richer  in 
starches  and  glutens,  as  indeed  might  naturally  be 
expected  from  the  extreme  diminution  in  the  number 
of  seeds  to  each  flower.  On  the  other  hand,  the  flowers 
on  each  plant  are  peculiarly  numerous  ;  so  that  we  get 
the  combined  advantages  of  many  seeds,  and  rich  seeds, 
so  seldom  to  be  found  elsewhere  except  among  the 
pulse  family.  The  experiments  conducted  by  the  Agri- 
cultural Society  in  their  College  Garden  at  Cirencester 
have  also  shown  that  careful  selection  will  produce  large 
and  rich  seeds  from  ^gilops  ovata,  considerably  re- 
sembling true  wheat,  after  only  a  few  years'  cultivation 


The  Origin  of  Wheat.  171 

Primitive  man,  of  course,  did  not  proceed  nearly 
so  fast  as  that.  Of  the  very  earHest  attempts  at  cul- 
tivation of  yEgilops,  all  traces  are  now  lost,  but  we 
can  gather  that  its  tillage  must  have  continued  in 
some  unknown  western  Asiatic  region  for  some  time 
before  the  neolithic  period  ;  for  in  that  period  we 
find  a  rude  early  form  of  wheat  already  considerably 
developed  among  the  scanty  relics  of  the  Swis§  lake 
dwellings.  The  other  cultivated  plants  by  which  it 
is  there  accompanied,  and  the  nature  of  the  garden 
weeds  which  had  followed  in  its  wake,  point  back  to 
Central  or  Western  Asia  as  the  land  in  which  its  tillage 
had  first  begun.  From  that  region  the  Swiss  lake 
dwellers  brought  it  with  them  to  their  new  home 
among  the  Alpine  valleys.  It  differed  much  already 
from  the  wild  ^gilops  in  size  and  stature  ;  but  at 
the  same  time  it  was  far  from  having  attained  the 
stately  dimensions  of  our  modern  corn.  The  ears 
found  in  the  lake  dwellings  are  shorter  and  narrower 
than  our  own  ;  the  spikelets  stand  out  more  hori- 
zontally, and  the  grains  are  hardly  more  than  half  the 
size  of  their  modern  descendants.  The  same  thing  is 
true  in  analogous  ways  with  all  the  cultivated  fruits 
or  seeds  of  the  stone  age  :  they  are  invariably  much 
smaller  and  poorer  than  their  representatives  in  exist- 
ing fields  or   gardens.     From  that  time  to  this  the 


172  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

process  of  selection  and  amelioration  has  been  constant 
and  unbroken,  until  in  our  own  day  the  descendants 
of  these  little  degraded  lilies,  readapted  to  new  func- 
tions under  a  fresh  regime^  have  come  to  cover  almost 
all  the  cultivable  plains  in  all  civilised  countries,  and 
supply  by  far  the  largest  part  of  man's  food  in 
Europe,  Asia,  America,  and  Australia. 


A  Moimtain   Tulip,  173 


VI. 
A   MOUNTAIN   TULIP. 

The  path  up  from  the  Llyn  to  the  crest  of  Mynydd 
Mawr  leads  for  some  distance  along  the  mossy, 
boulder-strewn  course  of  a  mountain  torrent,  which 
takes  its  rise  in  a  fairy  spring  close  below  the  actual 
summit  of  the  craggy  peak.  It  is  a  stiff  pull  for  fair- 
weather  pedestrians,  this  almost  untrodden  tourist 
trackway,  with  here  and  there  a  hand-and-knee 
clamber  over  great  glacier-marked  bosses  of  solid 
granite  ;  but  the  exquisite  glimpses  we  get  at  every 
fresh  spur  over  the  bare  shoulders  of  Moel  Siabod 
and  into  the  cleft  valley  of  the  upper  Conway  more 
than  compensate  for  the  rough  stony  walking  and  the 
obvious  damage  to  one's  nether  integuments.  Very 
few  casual  beaten-road  visitors  ever  find  out  these 
lonely  footpaths  up  the  less-frequented  mountains  ; 
the  mass  takes  its  circular  tour  round  the  regulation 
road  by  Llanberis,  Beddgelert,  and  Capel  Curig, 
leaving  Mynydd  Mawr  and  its  neighbouring  Carnedds 


174  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


out  in  the  cool  shade  of  popular  neglect.     So  much 
the  better  for  those  wandering  naturalists  who  love 

to  ramble  among  unhack- 
neyed scenes,  and  to  spy 
out  wild  nature  in  all  her 
native  loveliness,  an  Arte- 
mis who  only  bares  her 
beauty  among  the  deepest 
and  most  secret  recesses  of 
glade  or  woodland. 

Here  by  the  bank  of  the 
tiny  torrent,  where  I  shall 
stop  and  rest  on  a  smooth 
stretch  of  naked  rock  for  a 
few  idle  minutes,  there  is 
beauty  enough  in  all  con- 
science to  charm  the  spell- 
bound eyes  of  any  intrusive 
Actaeon.  The  moist  fis- 
sures of  the  water-worn 
granite  are  richly  clad  with  filmy  fronds  of  alpine 
ferns  ;  the  drier  crevices  among  the  tumbled  rocks 
are  tufted  with  the  black  stems  and  graceful  foliage 
of  the  maidenhair  spleenwort ;  and  the  scanty  alluvial 
mould  on  the  slopes  beyond  is  carpeted  by  lithe 
creeping  sprays  of  beautiful  branching  clubmoss.     All 


Fig.  41. — Lloydia  serotina 
(Mountain  Tulip). 


A  Mou)itai7i   Tulip.  175 


around  me,  a  wealth  of  luxuriant  mountain  vegeta- 
tion covers  the  peaty  soil  of  the  hollows,  or  the 
shallow  granitic  clay  washed  down  into  the  crannies 
from  the  weathering  crags  above.  There  are  insect- 
eating  sundews,  with  their  clammy  red-haired  leaves 
inclosing  the  half-digested  bodies  of  a  dozen  tiny 
flies,  whose  attention  they  have  falsely  attracted  with 
their  delusive  show  of  pretended  honey.  There  are 
equally  deceptive  butterworts,  with  tall  scapes  of 
bright  blue  blossoms,  and  with  pale  yellowish-green 
foliage  curled  tightly  round  their  mouldering  victims 
in  a  deadly  embrace.  There  are  Alpine  saxifrages, 
unfolding  their  pretty  pinky-white  flowers  to  the 
eager  advances  of  the  fertilising  bees.  And  here 
amongst  them  all,  in  a  sheltered  nook  of  the  inclosing 
granite  debris,  is  the  great  prize  of  the  day,  the  wee 
slender  mountain  tulip,  in  search  of  which  I  have  come 
out  this  breezy  morning,  and  whose  actual  home  on 
the  side  of  Mynydd  I  hardly  expected  to  light  upon 
so  easily  or  so  quickly  in  the  upward  march. 

Of  course  I  was  told  beforehand  exactly  where  to 
look  for  it  by  the  torrent's  brink  ;  for  our  botanists 
have  long  ago  so  thoroughly  overhauled  every  inch 
of  England,  Scotland,  Wales,  and  Ireland,  in  search 
of  specimens,  that  every  individual  station  for  every 
rare  British   plant  is  perfectly  well  known   to  them, 


176  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

and  printed  in  minute  detail  in  half  a  dozen  British 
floras.  But  I  feared  that  here  our  little  mountain 
tulip  might  be  quite  extinct  already,  exterminated  by 
the  too  pressing  attention  of  its  numerous  dilettante 
admirers  ;  for  as  soon  as  your  average  collector  finds 
a  last  lingering  relic  of  some  moribund  British  race 
on  down  or  moorland,  his  first  notion  is  to  complete 
its  destruction  by  rooting  up  the  one  remaining  in- 
dividual as  a  unique  specimen,  to  become  a  permanent 
record  of  his  luck  and  skill  in  the  brown  paper 
treasuries  of  his  own  herbarium.  We,  however,  are 
naturalists  of  another  kidney,  I  trust  :  we  will  observe 
and  examine  our  little  treasure  carefully  on  the  spot, 
but  we  will  not  pull  it  up  ruthlessly,  bulb  and  all, 
or  press  its  pretty  blossoms  under  a  dead  weight 
of  books  and  drying  paper,  in  order  to  preserve  its 
miserable  mummy  in  the  wretched  cemetery  of  a 
hortns  siccus.  Long  may  it  flourish  on  its  native  hill- 
side, and  may  no  scientific  hand  ever  grub  it  up  as 
the  cruel  trophy  of  a  specimen-slaughtering  raid! 
Indeed,  to  be  perfectly  frank,  like  the  canny  Scot  who 
was  '  no  thot  sure  of  Jocky,'  I  have  not  trusted  even 
my  readers  themselves  with  the  exact  secret  of  my 
tulip's  whereabouts.  I  will  confess  that  I  have  in- 
vented the  name  of  Mynydd  Mawr  on  purpose  to 
deceive,  and  I  have  led  up  to  the  summit  by  a  round- 


A  Mountain   Tulip.  177 

about  path  through  the  glen  of  Conway  in  order  to 
prevent  any  future  intruder  from  retracing  his  steps 
without  me,  and  annexing  for  his  own  private  aggran- 
disement the  pretty  flower  whose  Hfe  I  have  so  chival- 
rously and  humanely  spared.  When  we  come  to 
learn  the  history  of  its  race,  I  feel  sure  every  one  will 
sympathise  in  the  sentiment  which  makes  me  wish 
to  preserve  this  solitary  colony  of  Alpine  flowers  as 
long  as  possible  from  the  desecrating  hands  of  the 
abandoned  plant-collector. 

First,  let  us  look  exactly  what  manner  of  lily  it 
really  is,  and  then  we  will  go  on  to  unravel  together 
the  clues  and  tokens  of  its  romantic  history.  See,  it 
is  a  little  simple  grass-like  plant,  sending  forth  from 
its  buried  bulb  two  or  three  very  slender  blades  by 
way  of  leaves ;  and  from  their  midst  springs  a 
graceful  bending  stem,  surmounted  by  a  single  star- 
shaped  white  blossom.  At  least,  it  looks  white  at 
first  sight,  though  when  you  come  to  examine  it  more 
closely  you  can  observe  three  red  lines  running  down 
the  face  of  each  petal,  and  converging  on  a  small  bright 
golden  spot  at  their  base.  Those  lines  are  in  fact 
honey-guides  for  the  mountain  insects,  pointing  them 
the  shortest  road  to  the  sweets  stored  up  in  the 
nectaries,  and  so  saving  them  any  extra  trouble  in 
looking  about  for  their  morning's  meal.     On  the  other 


178  Flozvers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

hand,  the  insects  repay  the  flower  for  its  honey  by 
carrying  pollen  from  blossom  to  blossom,  and  so 
enabling  the  plant  to  set  its  seed.  Of  course,  unless 
the  young  capsule  in  the  centre  of  each  blossom  is 
thus  fertilised  by  pollen  from  one  of  its  neighbours, 
it  never  ripens  into  a  seed-bearing  fruit  at  all  ;  and, 
indeed,  in  the  economy  of  the  plant  itself,  the  sole 
object  of  the  blossom,  with  its  bright  petals,  its  store 
of  honey,  and  its  faint  perfume  (almost  imperceptible 
to  any  save  very  delicate  senses),  is  simply  to  induce 
the  bee  or  the  butterfly  thus  to  convey  the  fertilising 
powder  from  one  head  of  flowers  to  another  of  the 
same  sort. 

Our  little  plant  has  of  course  a  botanical  name  of 
the  usual  clumsy  kind  ;  but  in  this  particular  instance 
there  is  a  certain  rough  fitness  in  its  application,  for 
being  a  Welsh  lily  by  nature  it  is  duly  known  by  a 
Latinised  Welsh  name  as  Lloydia.  Now,  I  am  not 
going  this  morning  to  inquire  fully  into  the  whole 
past  history  of  the  original  family  from  which  it 
springs — that  would  be  too  long  a  subject  for  an  off- 
hand lecture  as  I  sit  here  basking  on  the  bare  granite 
slope  ;  I  propose  only  entering  in  any  detail  into  the 
last  chapter  of  its  chequered  career,  and  asking  how 
it  has  managed  to  keep  its  foothold  for  so  many  ages 
in  this  one  spot  and  on   a  few  neighbouring   Snow- 


A  Moitntain   Tulip.  179 

donlan   summits.     But  before  we  go  into  that   final 
question  we  must  just  begin,  by  way  of  preparatory 
exercise,  with  a  very  brief  account  of  its  earlier  origin. 
Lloydia  serotina,  then,  to  give  it  the  full  benefit  of  its 
Latinised  name,  is  a  mountain  plant  of  northern  and 
Arctic  Europe,  as  well  as  of  the  chillier  portions  of 
Siberia  and  British  North  America.     Further  south, 
it  is  found  only  in  the  colder  upland  shoulders  of  the 
Alps,  the  Caucasus,  and  the  Altai  range,  as  well  as  in 
a  few  other  great  snowy  mountain   systems ;  but  in 
Britain  it  occurs  nowhere  except  on  one  or  two  of  the 
higher  mountains  here  in  North  Wales.     By  origin,  it 
is  a  very  early  and  simple  offshoot  of  the  great  lily 
tribe  ;  one  of  the  most  primitive  lilies,  indeed,  now 
existing  on  the  face  of  the  earth.     Like  all  others  of 
that  vast  family,  it  has  six  petals  and  six  stamens  or 
pollen-bearing  sacs  ;  but  it  still  retains  a  very  early 
form  of  lily  flower  in  its   open  star-shaped  blossom 
as  well  as  in  one  or  two  other  smaller  peculiarities. 
The  cultivated  tulips  of  our  gardens,  varieties  of  a 
wild    Levantine   species,  are   all    descended    from    a 
somewhat  similar  form  ;  but  with  them  the  course  of 
development  has  gone  much  further  ;  the  petals  have 
grown  far  larger  and  more  conspicuous,  in  order  to 
allure  the  eyes  of  bigger  southern  insects,  and  the 
general  form  of  the  flower  has  become  bell- shaped 


i8o  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

instead  of  star-shaped,  in  order  to  ensure  more  safe  and 
certain  fertilisation  by  these  winged  aUies  ;  for  in  a 
tubular  blossom  the  pollen  is  much  more  likely  to  be 
brushed  off  from  the  insect's  head  on  to  the  proper 
portion  of  the  unripe  capsule  than  in  an  open  spread- 
ing flower  like  our  Lloydia  here.  Hence  we  may 
fairly  say  that  Lloydia  represents  an  early  ancestral 
form  from  which  the  modern  and  more  southerly 
tulips  are  nature's  enlarged  and  improved  varieties. 

But  how  did  these  pretty  little  white  lilies  get 
here,  and  why  do  they  still  remain  here  in  their  early 
simple  form,  while  their  southern  sisters  elsewhere 
have  been  slowly  modified  into  brilliant  yellow  bell- 
shaped  tulips }  Thereby  hangs  a  most  curious  and 
delightful  tale.  For  I  have  very  little  doubt  that  the 
ancestors  of  our  pretty  lilies  here  have  been  growing 
uninterruptedly  in  the  present  spot  for  many  thou- 
sands of  years,  and  that  during  all  that  time  they 
have  gone  on  reproducing  themselves  by  seed  from 
time  to  time,  without  once  having  crossed  their  stock 
with  any  of  their  congeners  in  the  Arctic  regions  or 
in  the  great  snowclad  ranges  of  central  Europe. 
Indeed,  I  very  much  doubt  whether  they  have  ever 
even  intermarried  with  their  neighbours  on  the  other 
Snowdonian  summits,  for  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to 
show  good  reasons  for  believing  that  each  of  these 


A  Mountain  Tulip.  i8i 

little  Isolated  colonies  has  lived  on  for  ages  all  by 
itself  on  each  of  their  three  scattered  peaks  in  the 
North  Welsh  district. 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  certainly,  that  one  should  find 
a  single  species  of  Arctic  flower  reappearing  at  such 
long  distances  in  such  isolated  spots  under  closely 
similar  circumstances.  If  we  go  to  the  great  snow- 
clad  stretches  of  land  which  extend  around  the 
Arctic  Circle  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  America,  we  shall 
everywhere  find  our  little  lily  growing  in  abundance 
close  up  to  the  line  of  perpetual  snow,  though  its 
diverse  habitats  are  there  divided  by  wide  expanses 
of  open  sea.  If,  again,  we  cross  the  whole  of  the 
German  plains,  we  shall  see  no  Lloydias  in  the  inter- 
vening tract  ;  but  when  we  reach  the  Alps  and  the 
Pyrenees,  we  shall  a  second  time  come  upon  other 
isolated  colonies  of  the  self-same  flower.  Once  more, 
we  may  turn  eastward,  and  we  shall  meet  with  it,  after 
a  long  march,  among  the  Carpathians  and  the  Cau- 
casus ;  or  we  may  turn  westward,  and  then  we  shall 
light  upon  it  again  on  the  craggy  sides  of  a  few  soli- 
tary Welsh  mountains.  How  does  it  come  that  in 
every  cold  tract  we  find  the  self- same  species  recur- 
ring again  and  again  wherever  the  circumstances  are 
fitted  for  its  growth  t  and  how  have  its  seeds  or  bulbs 
been  conveyed  across  such  wide  stretches  of  inter- 


1 82  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

vening  sea  or  valley  to  so  many  distinct  and  separate 
chilly  regions  ? 

One  obvious  answer  might  be,  that  under  similar 
conditions  a  like  flower  had  everywhere  been  de- 
veloped from  some  common  plant  of  lowland  or 
temperate  districts.  But  in  reality  such  absolute 
similarity  of  independent  development  never  actually 
occurs  in  nature,  for  the  various  Lloydias  are  not 
merely  rather  like  one  another,  but  are  actually  one 
and  the  same  species,  as  like  each  other  (to  quote  our 
old  Welsh  friend  Fluellin)  *as  my  fingers  is  to  my 
fingers.'  Now,  naturalists  know  that  such  absolute 
identity  of  structure  can  only  arise  through  unbroken 
descent  from  a  common  origin  ;  wherever  two  species 
are  separately  descended  from  unlike  ancestors,  how- 
ever close  their  analogies  may  be,  they  are  always  at 
once  marked  off  from  one  another  by  some  very 
obvious  points  of  structural  dissimilarity.  Nor  can 
we  suppose  that  the  seeds  of  the  Lloydia  have  been 
transported  from  one  place  to  another  by  mere 
accident,  clinging  to  the  legs  of  Arctic  birds,  or 
carried  unwittingly  on  the  muddy  heels  oi  globe- 
trotting tourists.  Such  accidents  do  indeed  occa- 
sionally occur,  and  they  account  for  the  very  frag- 
mentary manner  in  which  remote  Oceanic  islands  like 
the  Azores  or  St.  Helena  are  peopled  by  waifs  and 


A  Mountain   Tulip,  183 

strays  from  the  fauna  and  flora  of  all  neighbouring 
continents.  But  as  we  have  already  seen  in  the  con- 
verse case  of  the  hairy  spurge,  it  would  be  incredible 
that  such  an  accident  should  have  occurred  over  and 
over  again  in  a  hundred  separate  cases,  so  that  every 
suitable  place  in  the  whole  northern  hemisphere 
should  separately,  by  mere  luck,  have  received  a 
distinct  colony  of  appropriate  cold-climate  plants. 
Incredible,  I  should  say,  even  if  the  instance  of  the 
Lloyd ia  stood  alone  without  any  analogues  ;  but  in 
fact,  as  I  shall  try  to  point  out  by-and-by,  it  is  only 
one  instance  out  of  a  thousand  that  might  be  quoted  ; 
for  every  Arctic  land  and  every  snow-clad  Alpine  peak 
is  covered  close  up  to  the  limit  of  vegetation  with 
dozens  or  hundreds  of  similar  plants,  insects,  and 
animals,  which  are  nowhere  found  in  all  the  inter- 
vening temperate  or  lowland  regions.  Clearly  all 
these  coincidences  cannot  be  due  to  mere  accident  ; 
we  must  seek  for  their  reason  in  some  single  and 
common  fact. 

See  this  great  rounded  block  of  smooth  granite 
on  whose  solid  shoulders  I  am  now  sitting ;  how 
wonderfully  grooved  and  polished  it  is,  with  long, 
deep,  rounded  furrows  running  lengthwise  across  its 
face  in  the  same  direction  as  the  general  dip  of  the 
Conway  valley.     What  can  have  made  those  curious 


Floivei's  and  their  Pedis'recs. 


parallel  channels  on  its  naked  surface,  I  wonder  ? 
Any  one  who  has  ever  looked  closely  at  the  rocks 
about  the  foot  of  a  glacier  in  Switzerland  will  recog- 
nise at  once  what  was  the  agency  at  work  on  the 
granite  slopes  of  Mynydd  Mawr.  Those  are  most 
undoubtedly  ice-marks,  caused  by  the  long,  slow, 
grinding  action  of  the  superincumbent  glaciers.  For 
of  course  everybody  knows  nowadays  that  there  was 
once  a  time  when  great  glacial  sheets  spread  over 
the  combes  and  glens  of  Snowdonia,  as  they  spread 
to-day  over  the  nants  of  Chamounix  and  the  buried 
basin  of  the  Mer  de  Glace. 

Dr,  CroU's  calculations  have  shown  that  the  astro- 
nomical conjunction  necessary  for  the  production  of 
such  a  state  of  things  must  have  occurred  some  two 
hundred  thousand  years  since  ;  and  from  that  date 
down  to  eighty  thousand  years  ago  our  planet  kept 
presenting  alternately  either  pole  to  the  sun  during 
long  cycles  of  10,500  years  each  ;  so  that,  first,  the 
northern  hemisphere  enjoyed  a  long  summer,  while 
the  southern  was  enveloped  for  a  vast  distance  from 
the  Antarctic  Circle  in  a  single  covering  sheet  of  ice  ; 
and  then  again  the  southern  hemisphere  had  its 
lengthened  spell  of  tropical  weather,  while  the  north 
was  turned  into  one  enormous  Greenland  down  as 
far  as  the  British  Isles.     Eighty  thousand  years  ago, 


A  Mountain   Tulip.  185 

or  thereabouts,  this  condition  of  things  began  to 
change  ;  the  cHmate  of  the  north  became  more  genial ; 
and  ever  since  that  date  our  sober  planet  has  oscil- 
lated within  gentler  limits,  producing  only  such  alter- 
nate results  of  annual  summer  and  winter  as  those 
with  which  we  ourselves  are  now  familiar. 

When  the  glaciation  was  at  its  worst  in  the 
northern  hemisphere,  almost  the  entire  surface  of  the 
European  continent,  from  Scandinavia  and  Lapland, 
to  England,  Belgium,  and  central  Germany,  lay  buried 
beneath  one  unbroken  sheet  of  permanent  ice.  But 
when  the  conditions  were  a  little  less  severe,  local 
glaciers  radiated  from  the  chief  mountain  bosses  of 
Scotland,  Wales,  and  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  ground 
these  deep  grooves  and  scratches  on  the  worn  surface 
of  the  denuded  rock.  At  length  the  climate  began 
to  mend  slightly  ;  and  then  the  plants  and  animals  of 
the  Arctic  zone  spread  uninterruptedly  over  the  whole 
of  northern  Europe,  from  the  limit  of  pack-ice  to  at 
least  the  southern  slope  of  the  Alps  on  the  Italian 
side.  Remains  of  these  glacial  animals — Arctic  lem- 
mings, musk  sheep,  white  hares,  reindeers,  Alpine 
marmots,  and  snowy  owls — are  still  found  among  the 
bone-caves  and  river  drift  of  the  interglacial  ages  in 
various   parts  of   Europe,    from    Scandinavia   to  the 

Tuscan  grottoes.     At  the  same  time  we  may  be  pretty 
13 


1 86  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

sure  that  high  Arctic  or  Alpine  plants,  adapted  to  a 
chilly  climate,  like  the  saxifrages,  the  sibbaldia,  the 
crowberry,  and  the  Swiss  veronica,  spread  over  all 
the  plains  and  valleys  of  Great  Britain  and  the  neigh- 
bouring continent. 

In  those  days,  we  saw  good  reason  to  believe  when 
we  w^ere  examining  the  stranded  southern  flora  of 
Cornwall  and  Devonshire,  England  and  Ireland  were 
united  to  one  another  as  well  as  to  France  and  Hol- 
land by  a  broad  belt  of  lowland  occupying  what  is 
now  the  bed  of  the  two  channels  and  the  German 
Ocean,  so  that  the  mammoth  and  the  cave-bear  could 
roam  uninterruptedly  from  the  Yorkshire  hiljs  to  the 
rock-shelters  of  the  Dordogne,  and  from  the  bogs  of 
Connaught  to  the  then  ice-clad  summits  of  the  Hartz 
and  the  Jura.  The  dark  hunters  of  the  period,  who 
framed  the  rough,  chipped  stone  hatchets  of  the 
Abbeville  drift  and  the  beautiful  flint  arrowheads  of 
the  southern  French  caves,  could  in  like  manner  range 
without  let  or  hindrance  from  Kent's  Hole  at  Torquay 
to  the  Schwatka  cavern  in  Moravia,  and  from  the 
honeycombed  cliffs  of  Yorkshire  valleys  to  the  lime- 
stone grottoes  among  the  Alpine  slopes.  That  distri- 
bution of  land  and  water  easily  accounts  for  the  dis- 
persion of  Arctic  and  snow-line  plants  or  animals 
over  all  the  snowy  regions  of  northern  Europe. 


A  Mountain   Tulip.  187 

But  as  the  cold  began  to  subside,  and  as  a  warmer 
fauna  and  flora  invaded  the  now  milder  plains  and 
valleys  of  central  Europe,  the  glacial  types,  being  less 
adapted  to  the  new  conditions,  began  to  retreat  north- 
ward towards  the  Arctic  Circle,  or  upward  towards  the 
chilly  summits  of  the  principal  mountains.  Slowly, 
age  after  age,  the  southern  plants  and  animals  overran 
all  the  lower  portions  of  the  continent,  cutting  the 
glacial  fauna  and  flora  in  two,  and  established  them- 
selves as  far  as  the  outlying  peninsula  of  Britain, 
which  still  continued  to  form  an  integral  part  of  the 
European  mainland.  After  most  of  the  Germanic 
types  had  made  good  their  foothold  even  in  this  dis- 
tant region,  however,  and  after  the  still  more  southern 
pceonies  of  the  Steep  Holme  and  the  rock-cistus  of 
Torquay  had  established  themselves  under  the  lee  of 
the  Cornish  and  Kerry  mountains,  on  the  submerged 
tract  which  then  stretched  out  far  to  the  west  of  the 
Scilly  Islands,  the  land  began  to  sink  slowly  toward 
sea-level  ;  and  at  last  an  arm  of  the  Atlantic  encir- 
cled the  whole  of  Ireland,  and  still  later  the  waters  of 
two  long  gulfs  which  now  form  the  English  Channel 
and  the  North  Sea  met  together  by  bursting  through 
the  narrow  barrier  of  chalk  between  Dover  and  Cape 
Blancnez.  Thus  Britain  finally  became  an  island 
group  ;  and,  being  washed  on  three  sides  by  the  warm 


1 88  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

current  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  it  acquired  an  unusually- 
high  and  equable  temperature  for  a  district  situated  so 
far  to  the  north  and  rising  into  so  many  chains  of  low 
mountains.  But  not  all  the  plants  and  animals  which 
inhabit  the  continent  had  had  time  to  reach  England, 
which  has  a  comparatively  poor  fauna  and  flora  ;  v/hile 
still  more  failed  to  get  to  Ireland  before  the  separation  ; 
and  so,  the  Irish  flora  contains  a  larger  proportion  of 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  types,  while  the  mass  of  the 
English  flora,  especially  in  the  eastern  half  of  the 
island,  is  essentially  Germanic. 

Even  after  this  change  to  more  genial  conditions, 
however,  many  of  the  Arctic  plants,  though  now 
separated  by  wide  stretches  of  sea  or  land  from  their 
nearest  relatives  elsewhere,  managed  to  keep  up  a 
vigorous  existence  in  the  Scotch  Highlands,  the  Welsh 
hills,  and  the  greater  summits  of  the  Lake  district. 
Some  of  them  still  cover  vast  tracts  of  country  in  the 
north  ;  as,  for  example,  the  little  green  sibbaldia,  a 
tufted  Arctic  trailer,  whose  herbage  forms  a  chief 
element  of  the  greensward  in  many  parts  of  the 
Highlands  ;  or  the  pretty  eight-petalled  dryas,  which 
stars  with  its  sweet  white  blossoms  the  limestone 
rocks  of  northern  England  and  the  Ulster  hills. 
Among  the  more  common  of  these  isolated  old  glacial 
flowers  in   Britain   are  the  Alpine  meadow-rue,   the 


A  Motmtazn  Tulip.  189 

northern  rock-cress,  the  Arctic  whitlow-grass,  the 
Alpine  pearlwort,  the  Scottish  asphodel,  the  mossy 
cyphel,  the  mountain  lady's  mantle,  the  purple  saxi- 
frage, and  the  red  bearberry.  Altogether,  we  have 
still  more  than  two  hundred  such  Alpine  or  Arctic 
plants,  stranded  among  our  uplands  or  in  the  extreme 
north  of  Scotland,  and  probably  separated  for  many 
thousand  years  from  the  main  body  of  their  kind  in 
the  Arctic  Circle  or  the  snowy  mountains  of  central 
Europe. 

Our  pretty  little  Lloydia  here  is  far  rarer  in  Britain 
than  these  low  mountain  kinds  ;  for  it  has  died  out 
utterly  even  in  Scotland  itself,  and  now  survives  no- 
where with  us  except  on  these  solitary  Welsh  summits. 
Such  cases  are  frequent  enough  in  Britain  ;  for  while 
the  moderate  mountainous  or  Arctic  species  still  go 
on  thriving  among  the  straths  and  corries,  the  coldest 
kinds  of  all  have  often  been  pushed  upward  and  ever 
upward  by  the  advancing  tide  of  southern  flowers  till 
they  are  left  at  last  only  on  a  few  isolated  mountain 
tops,  where  many  of  them  are  even  now  in  course  of 
slowly  disappearing  before  the  steady  advance  of  the 
southern  types.  For  example,  there  is  a  certain  pretty 
kind  of  heath,  confined  to  northern  or  Arctic  hillsides, 
which  till  lately  lingered  on  in  Britain  only  on  the  one 
mountain  known  as  the  Sow  of  Atholc  in  Perthshire  ; 


I90  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

but  of  late  years  it  has  grown  rarer  and  rarer  with 
each  succeeding  summer,  until  it  is  now  probably 
quite  extinct.  It  is  the  natural  tendency  of  all  such 
small  isolated  colonies,  whether  of  plants  or  animals, 
to  die  slowly  out ;  for  they  cannot  cross  freely  with 
any  of  their  own  kind  outside  the  narrow  limits 
of  their  own  restricted  community ;  and  by  con- 
stantly breeding  in  and  in  with  one  another  they 
at  last  acquire  such  weak  and  feeble  constitu- 
tions that  they  finally  dwindle  away  imperceptibly 
for  want  of  a  healthy  infusion  of  fresh  external 
blood. 

If  I  mention  a  few  other  like  cases  (as  well  as  I 
can  remember  them  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  for  I 
cannot  pretend  to  give  a  complete  ex-cathedra  list 
here  on  the  slopes  of  Mynydd  Mawr)  it  will  help  to 
elucidate  the  origin  and  nature  of  this  little  colony  of 
mountain  tulips.  There  is  a  lovely  orchid,  the  lady's 
slipper,  common  in  Siberia  and  Russia,  almost  up  to 
the  Arctic  Circle,  but  now  found  with  us  only  in  one 
Yorkshire  station,  where,  like  the  Perthshire  heath,  it 
is  rapidly  verging  to  complete  local  extinction.  Again, 
among  one  family  alone,  the  tufted  saxifrage  has  now 
been  driven  to  the  summits  of  Ben  Avers  and  Ben 
Nevis  ;  the  drooping  saxifrage  is  extinct  everywhere 
in  Britain  save  on  the  cloudy  top  of  Ben  Lawers ;  the 


A  Mountain  Tulip.  19  ^ 


brook    saxifrage    lingers    on    upon  the    same  moun- 
tain, as  well  as  on  Ben  Nevis  and  Lochnagar  ;  and  the 


Fig.  42,— Lady's  Slipper  (Cypripedium  calceolius). 

Alpine  saxifrage,  though  more  frequent  in  little  solitary 
groups  in  Scotland  and  the  Lake  district,  has  died  out 


192  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

of  all  Ireland  save  only  on  the  bald  head  of  Ben  Bulben 
in  Sligo.  The  Alpine  sow-thistle,  an  Arctic  and 
snowy  weed,  is  now  dying-  out  with  us  on  the  tops  of 
Lochnagar  and  the  Clova  mountains.  The  black  bear- 
berry  yet  haunts  Ben  Nevis  and  a  few  other  Highland 
peaks.  The  Alpine  butterwort  has  been  driven  even 
from  the  mountains  in  Scotland  generally,  but  still 
drags  on  a  secluded  existence  in  a  few  very  northern 
bogs  of  Caithness  and  Sutherland  ;  in  this  respect  It 
resembles  the  northern  holy-grass,  an  Arctic  plant, 
which  Robert  Dick,  the  self-taught  botanist  of  Thurso, 
discovered  among  the  high  pastures  near  his  native 
town.  This  same  grass  strangely  reappears  in  New 
Zealand,  whither  it  has  doubtless  been  carried  from 
Siberia  by  its  seeds  accidentally  clinging  to  the  feet 
of  some  belated  bird  ;  but  then  such  a  solitary  case  in 
itself  shows  how  impossible  is  the  explanation  of  the 
numerous  Scotch  and  Welsh  Arctic  plants  as  due  to 
mere  chance  ;  for  while  in  north  European  mountains 
similar  instances  can  be  counted  by  hundreds,  in  New 
Zealand  the  coincidence  is  very  rare  and  almost 
unparalleled. 

The  snowy  gentian,  to  continue  our  list,  turns  up 
in  a  good  many  little  Scotch  colonies  ;  but  the  Alpine 
lychnis,  its  companion  on  the  mountain  pastures  of 
the  Bernese  Oberland,  is  only  now  known  in  Britain 


A  Mountain  Tulip.  193 


on   the   summit  of  Little    Kilrannoch,  a  Forfarshire 
mountain,  and  among  the  crags  of  Hobcartin  Fell  in 
Cumberland.     The  bog  sandwort,  everywhere  a  rare 
and  dying  species,  has  wholly  disappeared  from  these 
islands  except  on  the  sides  of  the  Widdybank  Fell  in 
Durham.     Its  ally  the  fringed  sandwort  loiters  late  on 
the  limestone  cliffs  of  Ben  Bulben  in  Sligo,  as  well  as 
on  one  solitary  serpentine  hill  in  the  island  of  Unst 
among  the  chilly  Shetlands.     A  tiny  pea-flower,  the 
Alpine  astragalus,  has  been  driven  almost  everywhere 
to  the  snow-line,  but  still  survives  in  Scotland  among 
the  Clova  and  Braemar  mountains.     It  is  on  a  single 
spot  in  the  same  exposed  Clova  range,  too,  that  the 
closely  related  yellow  oxytrope  still  grows  in  diminish- 
ing numbers  ;  while  its  ally  the  Ural  oxytrope  holds 
its  own  manfully  over  all  the  dry  hills  of  the  High- 
lands.    I  could  add  to  these  instances  many  more  ; 
but  lunch  is  waiting  to  be  eaten  in  the  knapsack,  and 
I  am  loth  to  tire  the  patience  of  my  hearers  with  too 
long   a    list   of  barren   names  and   bare  wind-swept 
mountain  summits. 

Still,  I  love  to  think  that  the  little  colony  of  timid 
shrinking  Lloydias  stranded  here  on  the  granite  slopes 
of  Mynydd  Mawr  can  push  back  its  pedigree  in  such 
an  unbroken  line  to  so  dim  and  distant  a  prehistoric 
past.     Ever  since  the  glaciers  last  cleared  away  from 


194  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

this  boss  of  smooth  stone  on  whose  broad  back  we 
are  sitting,  a  tiny  group  of  our  pretty  mountain  tulips 
has  continuously  occupied  age  after  age  this  self-same 
spot.  Originally,  no  doubt,  they  covered  the  whole 
sides  of  the  mountains  and  stretched  down  far  into 
the  plains  and  valleys  ;  but  gradually,  as  the  world's 
weather  grew  warmer,  they  were  restricted,  first,  to 
the  mountain  tracts  of  Wales  and  Scotland,  then  to  a 
small  Snowdonian  district,  and  finally,  even  within 
that  shrunken  realm,  to  two  or  three  isolated  peaks. 
Occasionally,  I  suppose,  a  seed  from  one  of  the  three 
existing  Welsh  colonies  may  be  carried  by  accident 
into  the  territory  of  the  others  ;  but  it  is  in  the  highest 
degree  improbable  that  the  stock  has  ever  been  rein- 
forced for  the  last  fifty  thousand  years  from  any  purely 
external  body  of  its  congeners  in  the  higher  Alps  or 
in  the  Arctic  regions.  The  dark  small  men  of  the 
neolithic  age,  the  Aryan  Celts  of  the  bronze  period, 
the  conquering  Roman  from  the  south,  the  English- 
man, the  Scandinavian,  the  Norman,  all  have  since 
come,  and  most  of  them  have  gone  again  ;  but  the 
Lloydias  still  hold  precarious  possession  of  their  soli- 
tary remaining  strongholds.  An  analogy  from  the 
animal  world  will  help  to  bring  out  the  full  strange- 
ness of  this  extraordinary  isolation.  Mount  Washing- 
ton in   New  Hampshire  is  the  highest  peak  among 


A  Aloimtain  Tulip.  195 


the  beautiful  tumbled  range  of  the  White  Mountains. 
On  and  near  its  summit  a  small  community  of  butter- 
flies belonging  to  an  old  Glacial  and  Arctic  species 
still  lingers  over  a  very  small  area,  where  it  has  held  its 
own  for  the  eighty  thousand  years  that  have  elapsed 
since  the  termination  of  the  great  ice  age.  The  actual 
summit  of  the  mountain  rises  to  a  height  of  6,293  ^^^t ; 
and  the  butterflies  do  not  range  lower  than  the  five 
thousand  feet  line— as  though  they  were  confined  on 
Snowdon  to  a  district  between  the  Ordnance  cairn  and 
the  level  of  the  little  slumbering  tarn  of  Glasllyn. 
Again,  from  Mount  Washington  to  Long's  Peak  in 
Colorado,  the  distance  amounts  to  1,800  miles  ;  while 
from  the  White  Mountains  to  Hopedale  in  Labrador, 
where  the  same  butterflies  first  reappear,  makes  a  bee- 
line  of  fully  a  thousand  miles.  In  the  intervening 
districts  there  are  no  insects  of  the  same  species. 
Hence  we  must  conclude  that  the  few  butterflies  left 
behind  by  the  retreating  main-guard  of  their  race  on 
that  one  New  Hampshire  peak  have  gone  on  for 
thousands  and  thousands  of  years,  producing  eggs 
and  growing  from  caterpillars  into  full-fledged  insects, 
without  once  effecting  a  cross  with  the  remainder  of 
their  congeners  among  the  snows  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains or  in  the  chilly  plains  of  sub-Arctic  America. 
So  far  as  they  themselves  know,  they  are  the  ^ 


196  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

representatives  of  their  kind  now  remaining  on  the 
whole  earth,  left  behind  like  the  ark  on  Ararat  amid 
the  helpless  ruins  of  an  antediluvian  world.  Well, 
what  these  Mount  Washington  butterflies  are  among 
insects,  that  are  our  pretty  wild  tulips  here  among 
English  flowers.  They  remain  to  us  as  isolated  relics 
of  an  order  that  has  long  passed  away  ;  and  they  help 
us  to  rebuild  with  fuller  certainty  the  strange  half-un- 
deciphered  history  of  the  years  that  were  dead  and 
gone  long  before  written  books  had  yet  begun  to  be. 


A  Family  History. 


T97 


VII. 
A   FAMILY  HISTORY, 

Although  the  roses,  like  many  other  highly  respect- 
able modern  families,  cannot  claim  for  themselves  any 
remarkable  antiquity — their  tribe  is  only  known,  with 


Fig.  43. — Common  Cinquefoil. 

certainty,  to  date  back  some  three  or  four  millions  of 
years,  to  the  tertiary  period  of  geology — they  have 
yet  in  many  respects  one  of  the  most  interesting  and 


198  Flowers  ajtd  their  Pedigrees, 

instructive  histories  among  all  the  annals  of  English 
plants.  In  a  comparatively  short  space  of  time  they 
have  managed  to  assume  the  most  varied  forms  ;  and 
their  numerous  transformations  are  well  attested  for 
us  by  the  great  diversity  of  their  existing  representa- 
tives. Some  of  them  have  produced  extremely  beau- 
tiful and  showy  flowers,  as  is  the  case  with  the  cultivated 
roses  of  our  gardens,  as  well  as  with  the  dog-roses, 
the  sweet-briars,  the  may,  the  blackthorn,  and  the 
meadow-sweet  of  our  hedges,  our  copses,  and  our 
open  fields.  Others  have  developed  edible  fruits,  like 
the  pear,  the  apple,  the  apricot,  the  peach,  the  nectar- 
ine, the  cherry,  the  strawberry,  the  raspberry,  and  the 
plum  ;  while  yet  others  again,  which  are  less  service- 
able to  lordly  man,  supply  the  woodland  birds  or  even 
the  village  children  with  blackberries,  dewberries, 
cloudberries,  hips,  haws,  sloes,  crab-apples,  and  rowan- 
berries.  Moreover,  the  various  members  of  the  rose 
family  exhibit  almost  every  variety  of  size  and  habit, 
from  the  creeping  silver-weed  which  covers  our  road- 
sides or  the  tiny  alchemilla  which  peeps  out  from  the 
crannies  of  our  walls,  through  the  herb-like  meadow- 
sweet, the  scrambling  briars,  the  shrubby  hawthorn, 
and  the  bushy  bird-cherry,  to  the  taller  and  more 
arborescent  forms  of  the  apple-tree,  the  pear-tree,  and 
the  mountain  ash.    And  since  modern  science  teaches 


A  Family  History.  199 

• . 

us  that  all  these  very  divergent  plants  are  ultimately 
descended  from  a  single  common  ancestor — the  prim- 
aeval progenitor  of  the  entire  rose  tribe — whence  they 
have  gradually  branched  off  in  various  directions, 
owing  to  separately  slight  modifications  of  structure 
and  habit,  it  is  clear  that  the  history  of  the  roses  must 
really  be  one  of  great  interest  and  significance  from 
the  new  standpoint  of  evolution.  I  propose,  therefore, 
here  to  examine  the  origin  and  development  of 
the  existing  English  roses,  with  as  little  technical 
detail  as  possible  ;  and  I  shall  refer  for  the  most  part 
only  to  those  common  and  familiar  forms  which,  like 
the  apple,  the  strawberry,  or  the  cabbage  rose,  are 
already  presumably  old  acquaintances  of  all  my 
readers. 

The  method  of  our  inquiry  must  be  a  strictly 
genealogical  one.  For  example,  if  we  ask  at  the 
present  day  whence  came  our  own  eatable  garden 
plums,  competent  botanists  will  tell  us  that  they  are 
a  highly  cultivated  and  carefully  selected  variety  of 
the  common  sloe  or  blackthorn.  It  is  true,  the  sloe 
is  a  small,  sour,  and  almost  uneatable  fruit,  the  bush 
on  which  it  grows  is  short  and  trunkless,  and  its 
branches  are  thickly  covered  w^ith  very  sharp  stout 
thorns  ;  whereas  the  cultivated  plum  is  borne  upon 
a  shapely  spreading  tree,  with  no  thorns,  and  a  well- 


200  Flowo^s  and  their  Pedigrees. 

£ 

marked  trunk,  while  the  fruit  itself  is  much  larger, 
sweeter,  and  more  brightly  coloured  than  the  ancestral 
sloe.  But  these  changes  have  easily  been  produced 
by  long  tillage  and  constant  selection  of  the  best 
fruiters  through  many  ages  of  human  agriculture.  So, 
again,  if  we  ask  what  is  the  origin  of  our  pretty  old- 
fashioned  Scotch  roses,  the  botanists  will  tell  us  in 
like  manner  that  they  are  double  varieties  of  the  wild 
burnet-rose  which  grows  beside  the  long  tidal  lochs  of 
the  Scotch  Highlands,  or  clambers  over  the  heathy 
cliffs  of  Cumberland  and  Yorkshire.  The  wild  form 
of  the  burnet-rose  has  only  five  simple  petals,  like 
our  own  common  sweet-briar  ;  but  all  wild  flowers 
when  carefully  planted  in  a  rich  soil  show  a  tendency 
to  double  their  petals  ;  and,  by  selecting  for  many 
generations  those  burnet-roses  which  showed  this 
doubling  tendency  in  the  highest  degree,  our  florists 
have  at  last  succeeded  in  producing  the  pretty  Scotch 
roses  which  may  still  be  found  (thank  Heaven  !)  in 
many  quiet  cottage  gardens,  though  ousted  from 
fashionable  society  by  the  Marshal  Niels  and  Gloires 
de  Dijon  of  modern  scientific  horticulturists. 

Now,  if  we  push  our  inquiry  a  step  further  back, 
we  shall  find  that  this  which  is  true  of  cultivated 
plants  in  their  descent  from  wild  parent  stocks,  is 
true  also   of  the    parent    stocks  themselves   in  their 


A  Family  History,  201 

descent  from  an  earlier  common  ancestor.  Each  of 
them  has  been  produced  by  the  selective  action  of 
nature,  which  has  favoured  certain  individuals  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  at  the  expense  of  others,  and 
has  thus  finally  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  new 
species,  having  peculiar  points  of  advantage  of  their 
own,  now  wholly  distinct  from  the  original  species 
whose  descendants  they  are.  Looked  at  in  this 
manner,  every  family  of  plants  or  animals  becomes  a 
sort  of  puzzle  for  our  ingenuity,  as  we  can  to  some 
extent  reconstruct  the  family  genealogy  by  noting 
in  what  points  the  various  members  resemble  one 
another,  and  in  what  points  they  differ  among  them- 
selves. To  discover  the  relationship  of  the  various 
English  members  of  the  rose  tribe  to  each  other — 
their  varying  degrees  of  cousinship  or  of  remoter 
community  of  descent — is  the  object  which  we  set 
before  ourselves  in  the  present  paper. 

Perhaps  the  simplest  and  earliest  type  of  the  rose 
family  now  remaining  in  England  is  to  be  found  in 
the  little  yellow  potentillas  which  grow  abundantly  in 
ill-kept  fields  or  by  scrubby  roadsides.  The  poten- 
tillas are  less  familiar  to  us  than  most  others  of  the 
rose  family,  and  therefore  I  am  sorry  that  I  am 
obliged  to  begin  by  Introducing  them  first  to  my 
reader's  notice  rather  than  some  other  and  older 
14 


202  Flowers  and  their  Pedls^rees. 


acquaintance,  like  the  pear  or  the  hawthorn.     But  as 
they  form  the  most  central  typical   specimen   of  the 
rose  tribe  which  we  now  possess  in   England,  it   is 
almost  necessary  to  start  our  description  with  them, 
just  as  in  tracing  a  family  pedigree  we  must  set  out 
from  the  earliest  recognisable  ancestor,  even  though 
he  may  be  far  less  eminent  and  less  well-known  than 
many  of  his  later  descendants.     For  to  a  form  very 
much  like   the  potentillas   all   the    rose  family  trace 
their  descent.     The  two  best  known  species  of  poten- 
tilla  are  the  goose-weed  or  silver-weed,  and  the  cinque- 
foil.^     Both  of  them  are  low  creeping  herb-like  weeds, 
with  simple  bright  yellow  blossoms  about  the  size  of 
a  strawberry  flower,  having  each  five  golden  petals, 
and  bearing  a  number  of  small  dry  brown  seeds  on  a 
long  green   stalk.     At   first   sight  a  casual    observer 
would  hardly  take  them  for  roses  at  all,  but  a  closer 
view  would  show  that  they  resemble  in  all   essential 
particulars  an    old-fashioned    single  yellow    rose    in 
miniature.     From  some  such  small  creeping  plants  as 
these  all  the  roses  are  probably  descended.     Observe, 
I  do  not  say  that  they  are  the  direct  offspring  of  the 
potentillas,  but  merely  that  they  are  the  offspring  of 
some  very  similar  simple  form.     We  ourselves  do  not 
derive  our  origin  from  the   Icelanders  ;  but  the  Ice- 

»  See  fig.  43. 


A  Family  History,  203 


landers  keep  closer  than  any  other  existing  people 
to  that  primitive  Teutonic  and  Scandinavian  stock 
from  which  we  and  all  the  other  people  of  north- 
western Europe  are  descended.  Just  so,  the  roses 
do  not  necessarily  derive  their  origin  from  the  poten- 
tillas,  but  the  potentillas  keep  closer  than  any  other 
existing  rose  to  that  primitive  rosaceous  stock 
from  which  all  the  other  members  of  the  family  are 
descended.' 

The  strawberry  is  one  of  the  more  developed 
plants  which  has  varied  least  from  this  early  type 
represented  by  the  cinquefoil  and  the  silver-weed. 
There  is,  in  fact,  one  common  English  potentilla, 
whose  nature  we  have  already  considered,  and  which 
bears  with  village  children  the  essentially  correct  and 
suggestive  name  of  barren  strawberry.  This  particular 
potentilla  differs  from  most  others  of  its  class  in  hav- 
ing white  petals  instead  of  yellow  ones,  and  in  having 
three  leaflets  on  each  stalk  instead  of  five  or  seven. 
When  it  is  in  flower  only  it  is  difficult  at  first  sight  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  strawberry  blossom,  though 
the  petals  are  generally  smaller,  and  the  whole  flower 
less  widely  opened.     After  blossoming,  however,  the 

'  All  the  potentillas  have  a  double  calyx,  which  certainly  was  not 
the  case  with  the  prime  ancestor  of  the  roses,  or  else  the  whole  tribe 
would  still  retain  it. 


204  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

green  bed  or  receptacle  on  which  the  little  seeds  '  are 
seated  does  not  swell  out  (as  in  the  true  strawberry) 
into  a  sweet,  pulpy,  red  mass,  but  remains  a  mere  dry 
stalk  for  the  tiny  bunch  of  small  hard  inedible  nuts. 
The  barren  strawberry,  indeed,  as  we  saw  in  an  earlier 
paper,  is  really  an  intermediate  stage  between  the 
other  potcntillas  and  the  true  eatable  strawberry  ;  or, 
to  put  it  more  correctly,  the  eatable  strawberry  is  a 
white-flowered  potentilla  which  has  acquired  the  habit 
of  producing  a  sweet  and  bright-coloured  fruit  instead 
of  a  few  small  dry  seeds.  Since  we  have  got  to 
understand  the  raiionale  of  this  first  and  simplest 
transformation,  we  have  now  a  clue  by  which  we  may 
interpret  almost  all  the  subsequent  modifications  of 
the  rose  family,  and  I  must  therefore  be  permitted 
here  briefly  to  recapitulate  the  chief  points  we  have 
already  proved  in  this  matter. 

The  true  strawberry,  we  saw,  resembles  the  barren 
stravv'berry  in  every  particular  except  in  its  fruit.  It 
is  a  mere  slightly  divergent  variety  of  that  particular 
species  of  potentilla,  though  the  great  importance  of 
the  variety  from  man's  practical  point  of  view  causes 
us  to  give  it  a  separate  name,  and  has  even  wrongly 

•  Botanically  and  structurally  these  seeds,  as  we  always  call  them, 
are  really  fruits  ;  but  the  point  is  a  purely  technical  one,  with  which  it 
is  quite  unnecessary  to  1  ore  the  reader.  I  only  mention  it  here  to 
anticipate  the  sharp  eyes  of  botanical  critics. 


A  Family  History,  205 

induced  botanists  to  place  it  in  a  separate  genus  all 
by  itself.  In  reality,  however,  the  peculiarity  of  the 
fruit  is  an  extremely  slight  one,  very  easily  brought 
about.  In  all  other  points— in  its  root,  its  leaf,  its 
stem,  its  flower,  nay,  even  its  silky  hairs — the  straw- 
berry all  but  exactly  reproduces  the  white  potentilla. 
It  is  nothing  more  than  one  of  these  potentillas  with 
a  slight  diversity  in  the  way  it  forms  its  fruit.  To 
account,  therefore,  for  the  strawberry  we  had  first  to 
account  for  the  white  potentilla  from  which  it  springs. 
The  white  potentilla,  or  barren  strawberry,  you 
will  remember,  is  itself  a  slightly  divergent  form  of 
the  yellow  potentillas,  such  as  the  cinquefoil.  From 
these  it  differs  in  three  chief  particulars.  In  the  first 
place,  it  does  not  creep,  but  stands  erect ;  this  is  due 
to  its  mode  of  life  on  banks  or  in  open  woods,  not 
among  grass  and  meadows  as  is  the  case  with  the 
straggling  cinquefoil.  In  the  second  place,  it  has 
three  leaflets  on  each  stalk  instead  of  five,  and  this  is 
a  slight  variation  of  a  sort  liable  to  turn  up  at  any 
time  in  any  plant,  as  the  number  of  leaflets  is  very 
seldom  quite  constant.  In  the  third  place,  it  has 
white  petals  instead  of  yellow  ones,  and  this  is  the 
most  important  difference  of  any.  All  flowers  with 
bright  and  conspicuous  petals  we  know  are  fertilised 
by   insects,  which  visit  them   in   search   of  honey  or 


2o6  Flowers  and  their  Pedigr^ees. 

pollen,  and  the  use  of  the  coloured  petals  is,  in  fact, 

to  attract  the  insects  and  to  induce  them  to  fertilise 

the    seeds.     Now,    yellow    seems    to    have    been  the 

original    colour    of  the    petals  in   almost  all   (if   not 

absolutely  in  all)  families  of  flowers  ;  and  the  greater 

number  of  potentillas  are  still  yellow.     But  different 

flowers  are  visited  and  fertilised  by  different  insects, 

and  as  some  insects  like  one  colour  and  some  another, 

many  blossoms  have  acquired  white  or  pink  or  purple 

petals  in  the  place  of  yellow  ones,  to  suit  the  particular 

taste  of  their   insect  friends.     In  tracing  the  upward 

course  of  development  in  the  roses,  we  shall  see  that 

they  follow  the  ordinary  law  of  progressive  chromatic 

changes  :  the  simpler  types  are  yellow  ;  the  somewhat 

higher  ones  are  white  ;  the  next  pink  ;  and  the  highest 

in  this  particular  family  are  red  ;  for  no  rose  has  yet 

attained  to  the  final  stage  of  all,  which  is  blue.     The 

colours  of  petals  are  always  liable  to  vary,  as  we  all 

see  in  our  gardens,  where  florists  can  produce  at  will 

almost  any  shade  or  tint  that  they  choose  ;  and  when 

wild  flowers  happen   to   vary  in  this  way,  they  often 

get  visited  by  some  fresh  kind  of  insect  which  fertilises 

their  seeds  better  than  the  old  ones  did,  and   so  in 

time   they    set    up    a   new  variety  or  a   new  species. 

Two  of  our  English  potentillas  have   thus  acquired 

white    flowers    to    suit    their    proper  flies,  while    one 


A  FamUy  History.  207 

boggy  species  has  developed  purple  petals  to  meet 
the  aesthetic  requirements  of  the  marsh-land  insects. 
No  doubt  the  white  blossoms  of  the  barren  straw- 
berry are  thus  due  to  some  original  '  sport '  or  acci- 
dental variation,  which  has  been  perpetuated  and 
become  a  fixed  habit  of  the  plant  because  it  gave  it 
a  better  and  surer  chance  of  setting  its  seeds,  and  so 
of  handing  down  its  peculiarities  to  future  genera- 
tions. 

And  now,  how  did  we  find  the  true  strawberry 
had  developed  from  the  three-leaved  white  potentilla  ? 
Here  the  birds  came  in  to  play  their  part,  as  the  bees 
and  flies  had  done  in  producing  the  white  blossom. 
Birds  are  largely  dependent  upon  fruits  and  seeds  for 
their  livelihood,  and  so  far  as  they  are  concerned  it 
does  not  matter  much  to  them  which  they  eat.  But 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  plant  it  matters  a  great 
deal.  For  if  a  bird  eats  and  digests  a  seed,  then  the 
seed  can  never  grow  up  to  be  a  young  plant ;  and  it 
has  so  far  utterly  failed  of  its  true  purpose.  If,  how- 
ever, the  fruit  has  a  hard  indigestible  seed  inside  it 
(or,  in  the  case  of  the  strawberry,  outside  it),  the 
plant  is  all  the  better  for  the  fact,  since  the  seed  will 
not  be  destroyed  by  the  bird,  but  will  merely  be  dis- 
persed by  it,  and  so  aided  in  attaining  its  proper 
growth.     Thus,  if  certain   potentillas  happened  ever 


2o8  Flowers  and  their  Pedicrrees. 


t> 


to  swell  out  their  seed  receptacle  into  a  sweet  pulpy 
mass,  and  if  this  mass  happened  to  attract  birds,  the 
potentillas  would  gain  an  advantage  by  their  new 
habit,  and  would  therefore  quickly  develop  into  wild 
strawberries  as  we  now  get  them.  But  the  difference 
between  the  strawberry  fruit  and  the  potentilla  fruit 
is  to  the  last  a  very  slight  one.  Both  have  a  number 
of  little  dry  seeds  seated  on  a  receptacle  ;  only,  in 
the  strawberry  the  receptacle  grows  red  and  succu- 
lent, while  in  the  potentilla  it  remains  small  and 
stalk-like.  The  red  colour  and  sweet  juice  of  the 
strawberry  serve  to  attract  the  birds  which  aid  in  dis- 
persing the  seed,  just  as  the  white  or  yellow  petals 
and  the  sweet  honey  of  the  potentilla  blossoms  serve 
to  attract  the  insects  which  aid  in  fertilising  the 
flowers.  In  this  way  all  nature  is  one  continual 
round  of  interaction  and  mutual  dependence  between 
the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds. 

The  potentillas  and  the  strawberry  plant  are  all  of 
them  mere  low  creeping  or  skulking  herbs,  without 
woody  stems  or  other  permanent  branches.  But 
when  we  get  to  the  development  of  the  brambles  or 
blackberry  bushes,  we  arrive  at  a  higher  and  more 
respectable  division  of  the  rose  family.  There  are 
two  or  three  intermediate  forms,  such  as  water-avens 
and     herb-bennet— tall,     branching,     weedy-looking 


A  Fa^nily  History. 


209 


roadside  plants — which  help  us  to  bridge  over  the 
gulf  from  the  one  type  to  the  other.  Indeed,  even 
the    strawberry    and     the    cinquefoil    have    a   short 


Fig.  44. — Fruit  of  Bramble. 

perennial,  almost  woody  stock,  close  to  the  ground, 
from  which  the  annual  branches  spring  ;  and  in  some 
other  English  weeds  of  the  rose  family  the  branches 


Fig.  45.— Flower  of  Bramble, 

themselves  are  much  stiffer  and  woodier  than  in  these 
creeping  plants.  But  in  the  brambles,  the  trunk  and 
boughs  have  become  really  woody,  by  the  deposit  of 


2  I  o  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

hard  material  in  the  cells  which  make  up  their  sub- 
stance. Still,  even  the  brambles  are  yet  at  heart 
mere  creepers  like  the  cinquefoil.  They  do  not  grow 
erect  and  upright  on  their  own  stems  :  they  trail  and 
skulk  and  twine  in  and  out  among  other  and  tajler 
bushes  than  themselves.  The  leaves  remain  very 
much  of  the  cinquefoil  type  ;  and  altogether  there  is 
a  good  deal  of  the  potentilla  left  in  the  brambles  even 
now. 

However,  these  woody  climbers  have  certainly 
some  fresh  and  more  developed  peculiarities  of  their 
own.  They  are  all  prickly  shrubs,  and  the  origin  of 
their  prickles  is  sufficiently  simple.  Even  the  poten- 
tillas  have  usually  hairs  on  their  stems  ;  and  these 
hairs  serve  to  prevent  the  ants  and  other  honey-thiev- 
ing insects  from  running  up  the  stalks  and  stealing 
the  nectar  intended  for  fertilising  bees  and  butterflies. 
Similar  hairs  in  the  goose-grass  grew,  you  will  re- 
collect, into  the  little  clinging  hooks  of  the  stems  and 
midribs.  But  in  the  brambles,  hairs  of  the  same  sort 
have  grown  still  thicker  and  stouter,  side  by  side  with 
the  general  growth  in  woodiness  of  the  whole  plant  ; 
so  that  they  have  at  last  developed  into  short  thorns, 
which  serve  to  protect  the  leaves  and  stem  from  herbi- 
vorous animals.  As  a  rule,  the  bushes  and  weeds 
which  grow  in  waste  places  are  very  apt  to  be  pro- 


A  Family  History,  2 1 1 


tected  in  some  such  fashion,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of 
gorse,  nettles,  blackthorn,  holly,  thistles,  and  other 
plants  ;  but  the  particular  nature  of  the  protection 
varies  much  from  plant  to  plant  In  the  brambles  it 
takes  the  form  of  stiff  prickly  hairs  ;  in  the  nettles,  of 
stinging  hairs  ;  in  the  gorse,  of  pointed  leaves  ;  and 
in  the  thorn-bushes  of  short,  sharp,  barren  branches. 

Another  peculiarity  of  the  bramble  group  is  their 
larger  white  flowers  and  their  curious  granulated  fruit. 
The  flowers,  of  course,  are  larger  and  whiter  in  order 
to  secure  the  visits  of  their  proper  fertilising  insects  ; 
the  fruits  are  sweet  and  coloured  in  order  to  attract 
the  hedgerow  birds.  Observe,  too,  that  the  flowers 
being  higher  in  type  than  those  of  the  strawberry,  are 
often  tinged  with  pink  :  here  we  get  the  first  upward 
step  in  the  direction  of  the  true  roses.  The  nature  of 
the  fruit  in  the  raspberry,  the  blackberry,  and  the 
dewberry,  again,  is  quite  diflerent  from  that  of  the 
strawberry.  Here,  instead  of  the  receptacle  swelling 
out  and  growing  red  and  juicy,  it  is  the  outer  coat 
of  the  separate  little  seeds  themselves  that  forms  the 
eatable  part  ;  while  the  receptacle  remains  white  and 
inedible,  being  the  '  hull '  or  stem  which  we  pick  out 
from  the  hollow  thimble-like  fruit  in  the  raspberry. 
Each  little  nut,  which  in  the  strawberry  was  quite 
hard  and  brown,  is  here  covered  with  a  juicy  black  or 


212  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

red  pulp,  inside  which  lies  the  stony  real  seed  ;  so 
that  a  blackberry  looks  like  a  whole  collection  of  tiny 
separate  fruits,  run  together  into  a  single  head.  More- 
over, there  are  other  minor  differences  in  the  berries 
themselves,  even  within  the  bramble  group  ;  for  while 
the  raspberry  and  cloudberry  are  red,  to  suit  one  set 
of  birds,  the  blackberry  and  dewberry  are  bluish  black, 
to  suit  another  set  ;  and  while  the  little  grains  hold 
together  as  a  cup  in  the  raspberry,  but  separate  from 
the  hull,  they  cling  to  the  hull  in  the  other  kinds. 
Nevertheless,  in  leaves,  flower,  and  fruit  there  is  a  very 
close  fundamental  agreement  among  all  the  bramble 
kind  and  the  potentillas.  Thus  we  may  say  that  the 
brambles  form  a  small  minor  branch  of  the  rose  family, 
which  has  first  acquired  a  woody  habit  and  a  succulent 
fruit,  and  has  then  split  up  once  more  into  several 
smaller  but  closely  allied  groups,  such  as  the  black- 
berries, the  raspberries,  the  dewberries,  and  the  stony 
brambles. 

The  true  roses,  represented  in  England  by  the 
dog-rose  and  sweet-briar,  show  us  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent development  from  the  original  type.  They,  too, 
have  grown  into  tall  bushes,  less  scrambling  and  more 
erect  than  the  brambles.  They  have  leaves  of  some- 
what the  same  sort,  and  prickles  which  are  similarly 
produced  by  the  hardening  of  sharp  hairs  upon  the 


A  Family  History.  213 

stem.  But  their  flowers  and  fruit  are  slightly  more 
specialised  — more  altered,  that  is  to  say,  for  a  par- 
ticular purpose  from  the  primitive  plan.  In  the  first 
place,  the  flowers,  though  still  the  same  in  general 
arrangement,  with  five  petals  and  many  stamens  and 
carpels  (or  fruit-pieces),  have  varied  a  good  deal  in 
detail.  The  petals  arc  here  much  larger,  and  they 
have  advanced  to  the  stage  of  a  brilliant  pink  ;  while 
the  blossoms  are  also   sweet-scented.      These  pecu- 


FiG.  46. — Vertical  section  of  a  Dog-rose. 

Harities  of  course  serve  to  attract  the  bees  and  other 
large  fertilising  insects,  which  thus  carry  pollen  from 
head  to  head,  and  aid  in  setting  the  seeds  much  more 
securely  than  the  little  pilfering  flies.  Moreover,  in 
all  the  roses,  the  outer  green  cup  which  covers  the 
blossom  in  the  bud  has  grown  up  around  the  little 
seeds  or  fruit-pieces,  so  that  instead  of  a  ball  turned 
outward,  as  in  the  strawberry  and  raspberry,  you  get, 


2  14  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

as  it  were,  a  bottle  turned  inward,  with  the  seeds  on 
the  inner  side.  After  flowering,  as  the  fruit  ripens, 
this  outer  cup  grows  round  and  red,  forming  the  hip 
or  fruit-case,  inside  which  are  to  be  found  the  separate 
Httle  hairy  seeds.  Birds  eat  this  dry  berry,  though 
we  do  not,  and  thus  aid  in  dispersing  the  species. 
But  though  they  digest  the  soft  red  outer  pulp,  formed 
by  the  swollen  stalk,  they  cannot  digest  the  hairy 
seed,  so  the  plant  attains  its  prime  object  of  getting 
them  duly  scattered.  The  true  roses,  then,  are  another 
branch  of  the  original  potentilla  stock,  which  have 
acquired  a  bushy  mode  of  growth,  with  a  fruit  differing 
in  construction  from  that  of  the  brambles.  Our  Eng- 
lish kinds  are  merely  pink  ;  the  more  developed  exotics 
are  often  scarlet  and  crimson. 

We  have  altogether  some  five  true  wild  roses  in 
Britain.  The  commonest  is  the  dog-rose,  which 
everybody  knows  well ;  and  next  comes  the  almost 
equally  familiar  sweet-briar,  with  its  delicately  scented 
glandular  leaves.  The  burnet-rose  is  the  parent  of 
our  cultivated  Scotch  roses,  and  the  two  other  native 
kinds  are  comparatively  rare.  Double  garden  roses 
are  produced  from  the  single  five-petalled  wild  varie- 
ties by  making  the  stamens  (which  are  the  organs  for 
manufacturing  pollen)  turn  into  bright-coloured  petals. 
There  is  always  more  or  less  of  a  tendency  for  stamens 


A  Family  History,  215 

thus  to  alter  their  character  ;  but  in  a  wild  state  it 
never  comes  to  any  good,  because  such  plants  can 
never  set  seed,  for  want  of  pollen,  and  so  die  out  in  a 
single  generation.  Our  gardeners,  however,  carefully 
select  these  distorted  individuals,  and  so  at  length 
produce  the  large,  handsome,  barren  flowers  with 
which  we  are  so  familiar.  The  cabbage  and  moss 
roses  are  monstrous  forms  thus  bred  from  the  common 
wild  French  roses  of  the  Mediterranean  region  ;  the 
China  roses  are  cultivated  abortions  from  an  Asiatic 
species  ;  and  most  of  the  other  garden  varieties  arc 
artificial  crosses  between  these  or  various  other  kinds, 
obtained  by  fertilising  the  seed  vessels  of  one  bush 
with  pollen  taken  from  the  blossoms  of  another  of  a 
different  sort.  To  a  botanical  eye,  double  flowers, 
however  large  and  fine,  are  never  really  beautiful, 
because  they  lack  the  order  and  symmetry  which 
appear  so  conspicuously  in  the  five  petals,  the  clus- 
tered stamens,  and  the  regular  stigmas  of  the  natural 
form. 

From  the  great  central  division  of  the  rose  family, 
thus  represented  by  the  potentillas,  the  strawberry, 
the  brambles,  and  the  true  roses,  two  main  younger 
branches  have  diverged  much  more  widely  in  different 
directions.  As  often  happens,  these  junior  offshoots 
have  outstripped  and   surpassed   the   elder  stock  in 


2i6  Flowers  and  ihcir  Pedigrees. 


many  points  of  structure  and  function.  The  first  of 
the  two  branches  in  question  is  that  of  the  plum-tribe  ; 
the  second  is  that  of  the  pears  and  apples.  Each 
presents  us  with  some  new  and  important  modifica- 
tions of  the  family  traits. 

Of  the  plum  tribe,  our  most  familiar  English 
examples,  wild  or  cultivated,  are  the  sloe  or  black- 
thorn, with  its  descendant  the  garden  plum  ;  as  well 
as  the  cherry,  the  apricot,  the  peach,  the  nectarine, 
and  the  almond.  All  these  plants  differ  more  or  less 
conspicuously  from  the  members  of  the  central  group 
which  we  have  so  far  been  examining  in  their  tree- 
like size  and  larger  trunks.  But  they  also  differ  in 
another  important  point :  each  flower  contains  only 
one  seed  instead  of  many,  and  this  seed  is  inclosed  in 
a  hard  bony  covering,  which  causes  the  whole  plum 
tribe  (except  only  the  almond,  of  which  more  anon) 
to  be  popularly  included  under  the  common  title 
of '  stone-fruits.'  In  most  cases,  too,  the  single  seed 
"4s  further  coated  with  a  soft,  sweet,  succulent  pulp, 
making  the  whole  into  an  edible  fruit.  What,  now, 
is  the  reason  for  this  change  }  What  advantage  did 
the  plant  derive  from  this  departure  from  the  ordinary 
type  of  rose-flower  and  rose-fruit  t  To  answer  this 
question  we  must  look  at  one  particular  instance  in 
detail,  and  we  cannot  do  better  than  take  that  well- 


A  Family  History.  217 

known  fruit,  the  cherry,  as  our  prime  example  of  the 
whole  class. 

The  cherry,  like  the  strawberry,  is  an  eatable 
fruit.  But  while  in  the  strawberry  we  saw  that  the 
pulpy  part  consisted  of  the  swollen  stalk  or  recep- 
tacle, in  which  several  small  dry  seeds  were  loosely 
embedded,  with  the  cherry  the  pulpy  part  consists  of 
the  outer  coat  of  the  fruit  or  seed  vessel  itself,  which 
has  grown  soft  and  juicy  instead  of  remaining  hard 
and  dry.  In  this  respect  the  cherry  resembles  a 
single  grain  from  a  raspberry ;  but  from  the  raspberry, 
again,  it  differs  in  the  fact  that  each  flower  produces 
only  a  single  solitary  one-seeded  fruit,  instead  of  pro- 
ducing a  number  of  little  fruits,  all  arranged  together 
in  a  sort  of  thimble.  In  the  raspberry  flower,  when 
blossoming,  you  will  find  in  the  centre  several  separate 
carpels  or  fruit-pieces  ;  in  the  cherry  you  will  find 
only  one.  The  cherry,  in  fact,  may  (so  far  as  its  fruit 
is  concerned)  be  likened  to  a  raspberry  in  which  all 
the  carpels  or  fruit-pieces  except  one  have  become 
aborted.  And  the  reason  for  the  change  is  simply 
this :  cherry  bushes  (for  in  a  wild  state  they  are 
hardly  trees)  are  longer-lived  plants  than  the  bramble 
kind,  and  bear  many  more  blossoms  on  each  bush. 
Hence  one  seed  to  every  blossom  is  quite  as  many  as 

they  require  to  keep  up  the  numbers  of  the  species. 
15 


2i8  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

Moreover  their  large  and  attractive  fruits  are  much 
more  Hkely  to  get  eaten  and  so  dispersed  by  birds 
than  the  smaller  and  less  succulent  berries  of  the 
brambles.  Furthermore,  the  cherry  has  a  harder 
stone  around  each  seed,  which  is  thus  more  effectually 
protected  against  being  digested,  and  the  seed  itself 
consists  of  a  comparatively  big  kernel,  richly  stored 
with  food-stuffs  for  the  young  plant,  which  thus  starts 
relatively  well  equipped  in  the  battle  of  life.  For  all 
these  reasons  the  cherries  are  better  off  than  the 
brambles,  and  therefore  they  can  afford  to  produce 
fewer  seeds  to  each  flower,  as  well  as  tr  make  the 
coverings  of  these  seeds  larger  and  more  attractive  to 
birds.  Originally,  indeed,  the  cherry  had  two  kernels 
in  each  stone,  and  to  this  day  it  retains  two  little 
embryo  kernels  in  the  blossom,  one  of  which  is  usually 
abortive  afterwards  (though  even  now  you  may  some- 
times find  two,  as  in  philipcena  almonds)  ;  but  one 
seed  being  ordinarily  quite  sufficient  for  all  practical 
purposes,  the  second  one  has  long  since  disappeared 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases. 

The  plum  scarcely  differs  from  the  cherry  in  any- 
thing important  except  the  colour,  size,  and  shape  of 
the  fruit.  It  is,  as  we  have  already  noted,  a  cultivated 
variety  of  the  blackthorn,  in  which  the  bush  has  be- 
come a  tree,  the  thorns  have  been  eradicated,  and  the 


A  Family  History.  219 

fruit  has  been  immensely  improved  by  careful  selec- 
tion. The  change  wrought  in  these  two  wild  bushes 
by  human  tillage  shows,  indeed,  how  great  is  the 
extent  to  which  any  type  of  plant  can  be  altered  by 
circumstances  in  a  very  short  time.  The  apricot  is 
yet  another  variety  of  the  same  small  group,  long 
subjected  to  human  cultivation  in  the  East. 

Peaches  and  nectarines  differ  from  apricots  mainly 
in  their  stones,  which  are  wrinkled  instead  of  being 
smooth  ;  but  otherwise  they  do  not  seriously  diverge 
from  the  other  members  of  the  plum  tribe.  Indeed, 
though  botanists  rank  the  apricot  as  a  plum,  because 
of  its  smooth  stone,  and  put  the  peach  and  nectarine 
in  a  genus  by  themselves,  because  of  their  wrinkled 
coating,  common  sense  shows  us  at  once  that  it  would 
be  much  easier  to  turn  an  apricot  into  a  peach  than  to 
turn  a  plum  into  an  apricot.  There  is  one  species  of 
nectarine,  however,  which  has  undergone  a  very  curious 
change,  and  that  is  the  almond.  Different  as  they 
appear  at  first  sight,  the  almond  must  really  be  re- 
garded as  a  very  slightly  altered  variety  of  nectarine. 
Its  outer  shell  or  husk  represents  the  pulpy  part  of  the 
nectarine  fruit  ;  and  indeed,  if  you  cut  in  two  a  young 
unripe  almond  and  a  young  unripe  nectarine,  you 
will  find  that  they  resemble  one  another  very  closely. 
But  as  they  ripen   the   outer   coat   of  the  nectarine 


2  20  Flowers  and  their  Pediorees. 

grows  juicier,  while  that  of  the  almond  grows  stringier 
and  coarser,  till  at  last  the  one  becomes  what  we 
commonly  call  a  fruit,  while  the  other  becomes  what  we 
commonly  call  a  nut.  Here,  again,  the  reason  for  the 
change  is  not  difficult  to  divine.  Some  seeds  succeed 
best  by  making  themselves  attractive  and  trusting  to 
birds  for  their  dispersion  ;  others  succeed  best  by 
adopting  the  tactics  of  concealment,  by  dressing 
themselves  in  green  when  on  the  tree,  and  in  brown 
when  on  the  ground,  and  by  seeking  rather  to  evade 
than  to  invite  the  attention  of  the  animal  world. 
Those  seed  vessels  which  aim  at  the  first  plan  we 
know  as  fruits  ;  those  which  aim  rather  at  the  second 
we  know  as  nuts.  The  almond  is  just  a  nectarine 
which  has  gone  back  to  the  nut-producing  habit. 
The  cases  are  nearly  analogous  to  those  of  the  straw- 
berry and  the  potentilla,  only  the  strawberry  is  a  fruit 
developed  from  a  dry  seed,  whereas  the  almond  is  a 
dry  seed  developed  from  a  fruit.  To  some  extent 
this  may  be  regarded  as  a  case  of  retrogressive  evolu- 
tion or  degeneration. 

The  second  great  divergent  branch  of  the  rose 
family — that  of  the  pears  and  apples — has  proceeded 
towards  much  the  same  end  as  the  plums,  but  in  a 
strikingly  different  manner.  The  apple  kind  have 
grown  into  trees,  and  have  produced  fruits.     Instead, 


A  Family  History. 


221 


however,  of  the  seed  vessel  itself  becoming  soft  and 
succulent,  the  calyx  or  outer  flower  covering  of  the 
petals  has  covered  up  the  carpels  or  young  seed 
vessels  even  in  the  blossom,  and  has  then  swollen  out 
into  a  sort  of  stalk-like  fruit.  The  case,  indeed,  is 
again  not  unlike  that  of  the  strawberry,  only  that 
here  the  stalk  has  enlarged  outward  round  the  flower 
and   inclosed   the  seeds,  instead    of  simply   swelling 


Ftg.  47. — Vertical  section  of  Apple-blossom. 

into  a  boss  and  embedding  them.  In  the  hip  of  the 
true  roses  we  get  some  foreshadowing  of  this  plan, 
except  that  in  the  roses  the  seeds  still  remained  sepa- 
rate and  free  inside  the  swollen  stalk,  whereas  in  the 
pear  and  apple  the  entire  fruit  grows  into  a  single  solid 
mass.  Here  also,  as  before,  we  can  trace  a  gradual 
development  from  the  bushy  to  the  tree-like  form. 

The  common  hawthorn  of  our  hedges  shows  us, 
perhaps,  the  simplest  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the 
apple    tribe.     It   grows    only    into    a  tall    bush,    not 


222  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

unlike  that  of  the  blackthorn,  and  similarly  armed 
with  stout  spines,  which  are  really  short  sharp 
branches,  not  mere  prickly  hairs,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
brambles.  Occasionally,  however,  some  of  the  haw- 
thorns develop  into  real  trees,  with  a  single  stumpy 
trunk,  though  they  never  grow  to  more  than  mere 
small  spreading  specimens  of  the  arboreal  type,  quite 
unlike  the  very  tall  and  stately  pear-tree.  The 
flowers  of  the  hawthorn — may-blossom,  as  we  gener- 
ally call  them — are  still  essentially  of  the  rose  type  ; 
but,  instead  of  having  a  single  embryo  seed  and 
simple  fruit  in  the  centre,  they  have  a  compound 
fruit,  inclosing  many  seeds,  and  all  embedded  in  the 
thick  fleshy  calyx  or  flower-cup.  As  the  haw  ripens 
the  flower-cup  outside  grows  redder  and  juicier,  and 
the  seed  pieces  at  the  same  time  become  hard  and 
bony.  For  it  is  a  general  principle  of  all  edible 
fruits  that,  while  they  are  young  and  the  seeds  are 
unripe,  they  remain  green  and  sour,  because  then 
they  could  only  be  losers  if  eaten  by  birds  ;  but  as 
the  seeds  ripen  and  become  fit  to  germinate,  the  pulp 
grows  soft  and  sweet,  and  the  skin  assumes  its  bright 
hue,  because  then  the  birds  will  be  of  service  to  it  by 
diffusing  the  mature  seeds.  How  largely  birds  assist 
in  thus  dispersing  plants  has  very  lately  been  proved 
in  Australia,  where  a  new  and  troublesome  weed  has 


A  Family  History, 


rapidly  overrun  the  whole  country,  because  the  fruit- 
eaters  are  very  fond  of  it,  and  scatter  its  seeds  broad- 
cast over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land. 

The  common  medlar  is  nothing  more  than  a  haw- 
thorn with  a  very  big  overgrown  haw.  In  the  wild 
state  it  bristles  with  hard  thorns,  which  are  wanting 
to  the  cultivated  form,  and  its  flower  almost  exactly 
resembles  that  of  the  may.  The  fruit,  however,  only 
becomes  edible  after  it  begins  to  decay,  and  the  bony 
covering  of  the  seeds  is  remarkably  hard.  It  seems 
probable  that  the  medlar,  originally  a  native  of  southern 
Europe,  is  largely  dispersed,  not  by  birds,  but  by 
mice,  rats,  and  other  small  quadrupeds.  The  colour 
is  not  particularly  attractive,  nor  is  the  fruit  particu- 
larly tempting  while  it  remains  upon  the  bush  ;  but 
when  it  falls  upon  the  ground  and  begins  to  rot,  it  may 
easily  be  eaten  by  rodents  or  pigs,  and  thus  doubtless 
it  procures  the  dispersion  of  its  seeds  under  conditions 
highly  favourable  to  their  proper  growth  and  success 
in  life. 

The  little  Siberian  crabs,  largely  cultivated  for 
their  fruit  in  America,  and  sometimes  found  in  Eng- 
lish shrubberies  as  well,  give  us  one  of  the  earliest 
and  simplest  forms  of  the  real  apple  group.  In  some 
respects,  indeed,  the  apples  are  even  simpler  than 
the   hawthorn,  because   their  seeds  or  pips  are    not 


224  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

inclosed  in  bony  cases,  but  only  in  those  rather  tough 
leathery  coverings  which  form  what  we  call  the  core. 
The  haw  of  the  hawthorn  may  be  regarded  as  a  very 
small  crab-apple,  in  which  the  walls  of  the  seed  cells 
have  become  very  hard  and  stony ;  or  the  crab  may  be 
regarded  as  a  rather  large  haw,  in  which  the  cell  walls 
still  remain  only  thinly  cartilaginous.  The  flowers 
of  all  the  group  are  practically  identical,  except  in  size, 
and  the  only  real  difference  of  structure  between  them 
is  in  the  degree  of  hardness  attained  by  the  seed  covers. 
The  crabs,  the  apples,  and  the  pears,  however,  all  grow 
into  tallish  trees,  and  so  have  no  need  for  thorns  or 
prickles,  because  they  are  not  exposed  to  the  attacks 
of  herbivorous  animals.  Ordinary  orchard  apples  are, 
of  course,  merely  cultivated  varieties  of  the  common 
wild  crabs.  In  shape  the  apple-tree  is  always  spread- 
ing, like  an  arboreal  hawthorn,  only  on  a  larger  scale. 
The  pear-tree  differs  from  it  in  two  or  three  small 
points,  of  which  the  chief  are  its  taller  and  more 
pyramidal  form,  and  the  curious  tapering  outline  of 
the  fruit.  Nevertheless,  pear-trees  may  be  found  of 
every  size  and  type,  especially  in  the  wild  state,  from 
a  mere  straggling  bush,  no  bigger  than  a  hawthorn, 
to  a  handsome  towering  trunk,  not  unlike  an  elm  or 
an  alder. 

In  the  matter  of  fruits,- the  apple  group  are  more 


A  Family  History.  225 

advanced  than  the  roses,  but  so  far  as  regards  the 
flower  alone,  viewed  as  an  organ  for  attracting  insects, 
many  of  the  apple  tribe  are  inferior  to  the  true  roses. 
Here  again,  however,  we  can  trace  a  regular  gradation 
from  the  small  white  blossoms  of  the  may,  through 
the  larger  blushing  pink  flowers  of  the  apple,  to  the 
very  expanded  and  brilliant  crimson  petals  of  that 
beautiful  ornamental  species  of  pear,  the  Pyrus  japon- 
ica,  so  often  trained  on  the  sunny  walls  of  cottages. 

The  quince  is  another  form  of  apple  very  little 
removed  from  its  congeners  except  in  the  fruit. 
More  different  in  external  appearance  is  the  moun- 
tain-ash or  rowan-tree,  which  few  people  would  take 
at  first  sight  for  a  rose  at  all.  Nevertheless,  its 
flowers  exactly  resemble  apple-blossom,  and  its  pretty 
red  berries  are  only  small  crabs,  dwarfed,  no  doubt, 
by  its  love  for  mountain  heights  and  bleak  windy 
situations,  and  clustered  closely  together  into  large 
drooping  bundles.  For  the  same  reason,  perhaps, 
its  leaves  have  been  split  up  into  numerous  small 
leaflets,  which  causes  it  to  have  been  popularly 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  ash.  In  the  extreme  north,  the 
rowan  shrinks  to  the  condition  of  a  stunted  shrub  ; 
but  in  deep  rich  soils  and  warmer  situations  it  rises 
into  a  pretty  and  graceful  tree.  The  berries  are 
eagerly  eaten    by   birds,    for  whose    attraction   most 


2  26  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees, 

probably  they  have  developed  their  beautiful  scarlet 
colour. 

So  far,  all  the  members  of  the  rose  family  with 
which  we  have  dealt  have  exhibited  a  progressive 
advance  upon  the  common  simple  type,  whose  em- 
bodiment we  found  in  the  little  wayside  potentillas. 
Their  flowers,  their  fruits,  their  stems,  their  branches, 
have  all  shown  a  regular  and  steady  improvement,  a 
constant  increase  in  adaptation  to  the  visits  of  insects 
or  birds,  and  to  the  necessities  for  defence  and  pro- 
tection. I  should  be  giving  a  false  conception  of 
evolution  in  the  roses,  however,  if  I  did  not  briefly 
illustrate  the  opposite  fact  of  retrogressive  develop- 
ment or  degeneration  which  is  found  in  some  mem- 
bers of  the  class  ;  and  though  these  members  are 
therefore  almost  necessarily  less  familiar  to  us, 
because  their  flowers  and  fruits  are  inconspicuous, 
while  their  stems  are  for  the  most  part  mere  trailing 
creepers,  I  must  find  room  to  say  a  few  words  about 
two  or  three  of  the  most  noteworthy  cases,  in  order 
to  complete  our  hasty  review  of  the  commonest  rosa- 
ceous tribes.  For,  as  we  all  know,  development  is 
not  always  all  upward.  Among  plants  and  animals 
there  are  usually  some  which  fall  behind  in  the  race, 
and  which  manage  nevertheless  to  eke  out  a  liveli- 
hood  for  themselves  in    some    less   honourable    and 


A  Family  History,  227 


distinguished  position  than  their  ancestors.  About 
these  black  sheep  of  the  rose  family  I  must  finally 
say  a  few  words. 

In  order  to  get  at  them,  we  must  go  back  once 
more   to   that   simple   central    group  of  roses  which 
includes  the   potentillas  and  the  strawberry.     These 
plants,  as  we  saw,  are  mostly  small  trailers  or  creepers 
among  grass  or  on  banks  ;  and  they  have  little  yellow 
or  white  blossoms,  fertilised  by  the  aid  of  insects.     In 
most  cases  their  flowers,  though  small,  are  distinct 
enough  to   attract  attention  in  solitary  arrangement. 
There  are    some  species  of   this  group,  however,  in 
which  the   flowers  have  become  very  much  dwarfed, 
so  that  by  themselves  they  would  be  quite  too  tiny 
to  allure  the  eyes  of  bees  or  butterflies.     This  is  the 
case  among  the  meadow-sweets,  to  which  branch  also 
the  spiraeas  of  our  gardens  and  conservatories  belong. 
Our  common  English  meadow-sweet  has  close  trusses 
of  numerous  small  whitish  or  cream-coloured  flowers, 
thickly  clustered    together  in   dense  bunches  at  the 
end  of  the  stems  ;  and  in  this  way,  as  well  as  by  their 
powerful  perfume,  the  tiny  blossoms,  too  minute  to 
attract  attention   separately,  are   able   to  secure  the 
desired   attentions  of  any  passing  insect.     In    their 
case,  as    elsewhere,  union   is   strength.     The  foreign 
spiraeas  cultivated  in  our  hothouses  have  even  smaller 


228  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


separate  flowers,  but  gathered  into  pretty,  spiky 
antler-like  branches,  which  contrast  admirably  with 
the  dark  green  of  the  foliage,  and  so  attain  the 
requisite  degree  of  conspicuousness.  This  habit  of 
clustering  the  blossoms  which  are  individually  dwarfed 
and  stunted  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  first  stage  of 
degradation  in  the  roses.  The  seeds  of  the  meadow- 
sweet are  very  minute,  dry,  and  inedible.  They  show 
no  special  adaptation  to  any  particular  mode  of  ad- 
vanced dispersion,  but  trust  merely  to  chance  as  they 
drop  from  the  dry  capsule  upon  the  ground  beneath. 

A  far  deeper  stage  of  degradation  is  exhibited  by 
the  little  salad-burnet  of  our  meadows,  which  has  lost 
the  bright  petals  of  its  flowers  altogether,  and  has 
taken  to  the  wasteful  and  degenerate  habit  of  fertili- 
sation by  means  of  the  wind.  We  can  understand  the 
salad-burnet  better  if  we  look  first  at  common  agri- 
mony, another  little  field  weed  about  a  foot  high,  with 
which  most  country  people  are  familiar  ;  for,  though 
agrimony  is  not  itself  an  example  of  degradation,  its 
arrangement  leads  us  on  gradually  to  the  lower  types. 
It  has  a  number  of  small  yellow  flowers  like  those  of 
the  cinquefoil  ;  only,  instead  of  standing  singly  on  . 
separate  flower  stalks,  they  are  all  arranged  together 
on  a  common  terminal  spike,  in  the  same  way  as  in  a 
hyacinth  or  a  gladiolus.    Now,  agrimony  is  fertilised  by 


A  Family  History. 


229 


insects,  and  therefore,  like  most  other  small  field  roses, 
it  has  conspicuous  yellow  petals  to  attract  its  winged 
allies.  But  the  salad-burnet,  starting  from  a  some- 
what similar  form,  has  undergone  a  good  deal  of 
degradation  in  adapting  itself  to  wind-fertilisation. 
It  has  a  long  spike  of  flowers,  like  the  agrimony  ;  but 
these  flowers  are  very  small,  and  are  closely  crowded 
together  into  a  sort  of  little  mophead  at  the  end  of  the 


A  B 

Fig.  48.— Single  flower  of  Salad  Burnet,  male  and  female. 


stem.  They  have  lost  their  petals,  because  these  were 
no  longer  needed  to  allure  bees  or  butterflies,  and  they 
retain  only  the  green  calyx  or  flower-cup,  so  that  the 
whole  spike  looks  merely  a  bit  of  greenish  vegetation, 
and  would  never  be  taken  for  a  blossoming  head  by 
any  save  a  botanical  eye.  The  stamens  hang  out  on 
long  thread-like  stems  from  the  cup,  so  that  the  wind 
may  catch  the  pollen  and  waft  it  to  a  neighbouring 
head  ;  while  the  pistils  which  it  is  to  fertilise  have 


230  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

their  sensitive  sufface  divided  into  numerous  little 
plumes  or  brushes,  so  as  readily  to  catch  any  stray 
pollen  grain  which  may  happen  to  pass  their  way. 
Moreover,  in  each  head,  all  the  upper  flowers  have 
pistils  and  embryo  seed  vessels  only,  without  any 
stamens  ;  while  all  the  lower  flowers  have  stamens  and 
pollen  bags  only,  without  any  pistils.  This  sort  of 
division  of  labour,  together  with  the  same  arrange- 
ment of  seed- bearing  blossoms  above  and  pollen- 
bearing  blossoms  below,  is  very  common  among  wind- 
fertilised  plants,  and  for  a  very  good  reason.  If  the 
stamens  and  pistils  were  inclosed  in  a  single  flower 
they  would  fertilise  themselves,  and  so  lose  all  the 
benefit  which  plants  derive  from  a  cross,  with  its  con- 
sequent infusion  of  fresh  blood.  If,  again,  the  stamens 
were  above  and  the  pistils  below,  the  pollen  from  the 
stamens  would  fall  upon  and  impregnate  the  pistils, 
thus  fertilising  each  blossom  from  others  on  the  same 
plant — a  plan  which  is  hardly  better  than  that  of  self- 
fertilisation.  But  when  the  stamens  are  below  and 
the  pistils  above,  then  each  flower  must  necessarily  be 
fertilised  by  pollen  from  another  plant,  which  ensures 
in  the  highest  degree  the  benefits  to  be  derived  from 
a  cross. 

Thus  we  see   that  the  salad-burnet  has   adapted 
itself  perfectly  to  its   new    mode  of  life.     Yet    that 


A  Family  History.  231 

adaptation  is  itself  of  the  nature  of  a  degradation, 
because  it  is  a  lapse  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  grade 
of  organisation— it  is  like  a  civilised  man  taking  to 
a  Robinson  Crusoe  existence,  and  dressing  in  fresh 
skins.  Indeed,  so  largely  has  the  salad-burnet  lost 
the  distinctive  features  of  its  relatives,  the  true  roses, 
that  no  one  but  a  skilled  botanist  would  ever  have 
guessed  it  to  be  a  rose  at  all.  In  outer  appearance  it 
is  much  more  like  the  little  flat  grassy  plantains 
which  grow  as  weeds  by  every  roadside  ;  and  it  is 
only  a  minute  consideration  of  its  structure  and 
analogies  which  can  lead  us  to  recognise  it  as  really 
and  essentially  a  very  degenerate  and  inconspicuous 
rose.  Yet  its  ancestors  must  once  have  been  true 
roses,  for  all  that,  with  coloured  petals  and  all  the 
rosaceous  characteristics,  since  it  still  retains  many 
traces  of  its  old  habits  even  in  its  modern  degraded 
form. 

We  have  in  England  another  common  weed,  very 
like  the  salad-burnet,  and  popularly  known  as  stanch- 
wound,  or  great-burnet,  whose  history  is  quite  as 
interesting  as  that  of  its  neighbour.  The  stanch- 
wound  is  really  a  salad-burnet  which  has  again  lost 
its  habit  of  depending  upon  the  wind  for  fertilisation, 
and  has  reverted  to  the  earlier  insect-attracting  tactics 
of  the  race.     As  it  had  already  lost  its  petals,  how- 


232  Flowei^s  a7id  tJieii^  Pedigrees. 

ever,  it  could  not  easily  replace  them,  so  it  has  coloured 
its  calyx  or  flower-cup  instead,  which  answers  exactly 
the  same  purpose.  In  other  words,  having  no  petals, 
it  has  been  obliged  to  pour  the  purple  pigment  with 
which  it  allures  its  butterfly  friends  into  the  part 
answering  to  the  green  covering  of  the  salad-burnet. 
It  has  a  head  of  small  coloured  blossoms,  extremely 
like  those  of  the  sister  species  in  many  respects,  only 
purple  instead  of  green.     Moreover,  to  suit  its  new 


Fig   49. — Flower  of  Stanch-Wound  or  Great  Burnet. 

habits,  it  has  its  cup  much  more  tubular  than  that  of 
the  salad-burnet ;  its  stamens  do  not  hang  out  to  the 
wind,  but  are  inclosed  within  the  tube  ;  and  the 
pistil  has  its  sensitive  surface  shortened  into  a  little 
sticky  knob  instead  of  being  split  up  into  a  number 
of  long  fringes  or  plumes.  All  these  peculiarities  of 
course  depend  upon  its  return  from  the  new  and  bad 
habit  of  wind-fertilisation  to  the  older  and  more 
economical  plan  of  getting  the  pollen   carried  from 


A  Family  History.  233 


head  to  head  by  bees  or  butterflies.  The  two  flowers 
grow  also  exactly  where  we  should  expect  them  to  do. 
The  salad-burnet  loves  dry  and  wind-swept  pastures 
or  rocky  hill-sides,  where  it  has  free  elbow-room  to 
shed  its  pollen  to  the  breeze  ;  the  stanch-wound  takes 
rather  to  moist  and  rich  meadows,  where  many  insects 
are  always  to  be  found  flitting  about  from  blossom  to 
blossom  of  the  honey-bearing  daisies  or  the  sweet- 
scented  clover. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  asked,  How  do  I  know  that  the 
salad-burnet  is  not  descended  from  the  stanch- wound, 
rather  than  the  stanch-wound  from  the  salad-burnet  t 
At  first  sight  this  might  seem  the  simpler  explana- 
tion of  the  facts,  but  I  merely  mention  it  to  show 
briefly  what  are  the  sort  of  grounds  on  which  such 
questions  must  be  decided.  The  stanch-wound  is 
certainly  a  later  development  than  the  salad-burnet  ; 
and  for  this  reason — it  has  only  four  stamens,  while 
the  parent  plant  has  several,  like  all  the  other  roses. 
Now,  it  would  be  almost  impossible  for  the  flower 
first  to  lose  the  numerous  stamens  of  the  ordinary 
rose  type,  and  then  to  regain  them  anew  as  occasion 
demanded.  It  is  easy  enough  to  lose  any  part  or  organ, 
but  it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  develop  it  over  again. 
Thus  the  great-burnet,  having  once  lost  its  petals,  has 

never  recovered  them,  but  has  been  obliged  to  colour 
IG 


234  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

its  calyx  instead.  It  is  much  more  natural,  therefore, 
to  suppose  that  the  stanch-wound,  with  its  few  sta- 
mens and  its  clumsy  device  of  a  coloured  calyx 
instead  of  petals,  is  descended  from  the  salad-burnet, 
than  that  the  pedigree  should  run  the  other  way  ;  and 
there  are  many  minor  considerations  which  tend  in  the 
same  direction.  Most  correctly  of  all,  we  ought  perhaps 
to  say  that  the  one  form  is  probably  a  descendant  of 
ancestors  more  or  less  like  the  other,  but  that  it  has 
lost  its  ancestors'  acquired  habits  of  wind-fertilisation, 
and  reverted  to  the  older  methods  of  the  whole  tribe. 
Still,  it  has  not  been  able  to  replace  the  lost  petals. 

I  ought  likewise  to  add  that  there  are  yet  other 
roses  even  more  degenerate  than  the  burnets,  such  as 
the  little  creeping  parsley-piert,  a  mere  low  moss-like 
plant,  clinging  in  the  crannies  of  limestone  rocks  or 
growing  on  the  top  of  earthy  walls,  with  tiny  green 
petal-less  flowers,  so  small  that  they  can  hardly  be 
distinguished  with  the  naked  eye.  These,  however,  I 
cannot  now  find  space  to  describe  at  length  ;  and, 
indeed,  they  are  of  little  interest  to  anybody  save  the 
professional  botanist.  But  I  must  just  take  room  to 
mention  that  if  I  had  employed  exotic  examples  as 
well  as  the  familiar  English  ones,  I  might  have 
traced  the  lines  of  descent  in  some  cases  far  more  fully. 
It  is  perhaps  better,  however,  to  confine  our  attention 


A  Family  Histo7y.  235 

to  fairly  well-known  plants,  whose  peculiarities  we  can 
all  carry  easily  in  our  mind's  eye,  rather  than  to  over- 
load the  question  with  technical  details  about  un- 
known or  unfamiliar  species,  whose  names  convey  no 
notion  at  all  to  an  English  reader.  When  we  con- 
sider, too,  that  the  roses  form  only  one  family  out  of 
the  ninety  families  of  flowering  plants  to  be  found  in 
England  alone,  it  will  be  clear  that  such  a  genealogy 
as  that  which  I  have  here  endeavoured  roughly  to 
sketch  out  is  but  one  among  many  interesting  plant 
pedigrees  which  might  be  easily  constructed  on  evolu- 
tionary principles.  Indeed,  the  roses  are  a  compara- 
tively small  group  by  the  side  of  many  others,  such 
as  the  pea-flowers,  the  carrot  tribe,  and  the  dead- 
nettles.  Thus,  we  have  in  England  only  forty-five 
species  of  roses,  as  against  over  two  hundred  species 
of  the  daisy  family.  Nevertheless,  I  have  chosen  the 
rose  tribe  as  the  best  example  of  a  genealogical  study 
of  plants,  because  most  probably  a  larger  number  of 
roses  are  known  to  unbotanical  readers  than  is  the 
case  with  any  other  similar  division  of  the  vegetable 
world. 


236  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


VIII. 

CUCKOO-PINT} 

Close  by  the  hedge-side  there  runs  a  little  streamlet 
known  to  the  village  children  for  two  miles  around  by 
the  strangely  pleonastic  title  of  the  Bourne  Brook. 
Pleonastic,  I  say,  because  bourne  is,  of  course,  good 
old  English  for  what  in  modern  English  we  call  a 
brook,  so  that  the  two  halves  of  the  common  name 
are,  in  fact,  synonymous,  the  later  word  being  added 
to  the  earlier  by  the  same  sort  of  unconscious  redupli- 
cation as  that  which  gives  us  the  double  forms  of 
Windermere  Lake  or  Mount  Ben  Jerlaw.  I  can't  tell 
you,  though,  what  a  world  of  life  and  interest  is  to 
be  found  among  the  low  cliff  banks  and  tiny  shingle 
patches  that  bound  the  Bourne  Brook.  In  the  stream 
itself  there  are  darting  crayfish,  which  we  can  catch 
with  our  fingers  by  lifting  up  the  green  slimy  stones  ; 
there  are  caddis-worms,  and  big  pond  snails,  and  pout- 
ing miller's  thumbs,  and  iridescent  stickleback  ;  it  is 
even  rumoured,  though  I  doubt  whether  on  sufficient 

'  A  lecture  delivered  at  the  Midland  Institute,  Birmingham. 


Cuckoo- Pint. 


^2>7 


authority,  that  there  are  actually  and  positively  in 
some  of  its  pools  and  stickles  genuine  unadulterated 
real  live  trout.  I  know  as  a  fact,  however,  that  there 
are  fresh-water  mussels,  for  these   I  have  fished   up 


Fig.  50. — Cuckoo-Pint  (Aram  Maculatum). 

with  my  little  dredging-net,  and  safely  domesticated 
in  the  bell-glass  aquarium.  In  the  fields  around  there 
are  ferns,  and  marsh-marigolds,  and  rushes,  and  roast- 
beef  plants.     And  beside  the  water's  edge  there  are 


23 S  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

abundant  leaves  and  blossoms  of  that  strange  flower 
the  cuckoo-pint,  whose  counterfeit  presentment  you 
see  in  the  figure  on  the  previous  page.  Now, 
cuckoo-pint,  or  lords-and-ladies,  or  wild  arum,  which- 
ever you  choose  to  call  it,  is  a  very  singular  plant  in- 
deed ;  and  it  seems  to  me  we  cannot  do  better  than 
sit  down  and  dissect  one  for  the  sake  of  understanding 
its  queer  internal  arrangements.  If  it  were  a  newly 
discovered  Central  African  lily,  we  should  all  be  read- 
ing about  its  extraordinary  adaptations  in  all  the  news- 
papers: much  more  then,  since  it  is  a  common  English 
plant  we  have  all  known  familiarly  from  childhood 
upward,  ought  we  to  wish  for  some  explanation  of  its 
singular  shape  and  its  wonderful  devices  for  entrap- 
ping and  intoxicating  helpless  little  flying  insects. 

First  of  all,  we  must  begin  by  recognising  that  the 
apparent  flower  of  the  cuckoo-pint  is  not  one  single 
blossom,  but  a  whole  group  of  separate  blossoms, 
closely  crowded  together  in  two  or  three  little  distinct 
bundles  on  a  long  spike  or  succulent  stem.  And  in 
order  to  let  us  all  clearly  understand  the  meaning  and 
nature  of  the  entire  compound  structure,  I  think  we 
had  better  divide  our  subject  (as  if  it  were  a  sermon) 
into  three  heads.  First,  we  must  consider  what  are 
the  actual  parts  to  be  distinguished  from  one  another 
in  the  flower  of  the  cuckoo-pint  at  the  present  day. 


Cuckoo-Pint, 


239 


Secondly,  we  must  ask  what  was  the  course  of  evolu- 
tion by  which  they  each  assumed  those  peculiar  forms. 
And  thirdly,  we  must  inquire  what  good  purpose  in 
the  economy  of  the  plant  is  subserved  by  each  part  in 
the  existing  cuckoo-pints  as  we  now  find  them.  We 
shall  thus  have  learnt,  at  last,  what  a 
cuckoo-pint  is,  how  it  came  to  be  so, 
and  why  its  various  portions  have  been 
brought  to  assume  their  present  forms. 

Beginning,  then,  with  the  purely 
structural  or  positive  arrangement  of  the 
cuckoo-pint  as  we  find  it  in  nature  at 
the  present  day,  we  see  at  once  that 
its  blossom  consists  mainly  of  a  large 
greenish-purple  sheath  or  hood,  at  the 
top  of  a  long  stalk,  inclosing  a  tall 
fleshy  spike  or  club,  shaped  something 
like  a  mace,  and  protruding  from  the 
hood  in  front,  so  as  to  show  its 
coloured  and  expanded  summit  above 
the  point  of  junction  of  the  two  lips.  Spadix  of  Arum. 
That  is  all  that  one  can  see  of  the  blossom  from 
the  outside  ;  but  in  reality  these  two  conspicuous 
organs  form  no  part  of  the  actual  and  genuine 
flowers  themselves  at  all.  They  are  merely  inci- 
dental accessories,    put    there    for   an  excellent  pur- 


FlG. 


240  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

pose  indeed,  as  everything  always  is  in  the  balanced 
economy  of  nature  ;  but  not  essential  or  necessary  to 
the  existence  of  the  flowers  as  flowers,  though  most 
noticeable  from  their  size  and  hue  to  the  superficial 
eyes  of  the  unscientific  human  kind.  In  order  to  see 
the  true  flowers  themselves,  we  must  cut  open  the  side 
of  the  hood  or  sheath,  as  has  been  done  in  the  accom- 
panying diagram,  and  then  one  can  observe  a  number 
of  small  knobby  bodies  clustering  in  three  groups 
along  the  lower  part  of  the  club-shaped  spike  or  cen- 
tral axis.  Those  little  knobby  bodies,  of  which  there 
are  a  great  many  in  each  arum,  form  the  real  blossoms 
of  the  cuckoo-pint  ;  and  they  are  inclosed  in  the 
sheathing  hood  for  a  very  good  reason,  as  we  shall 
hereafter  see,  in  order  to  ensure  the  carrying  out  of 
their  proper  function,  the  final  production  of  seeds  and 
berries. 

If  one  looks  closely  at  the  diagram,  however,  one 
can  notice  that  these  little  knobby  flowers  are  not  all 
quite  similar  to  one  another.  They  consist  of  three 
distinct  kinds,  all  three  of  which  are  always  found  in 
true  arums  of  this  type.  At  the  bottom  there  are  a 
whole  group  of  small  cushion-like  green  lumps,  each 
with  a  little  point  in  its  centre,  and  all  closely  packed 
together  in  several  irregular  rows,  like  Indian  corn  on 
the   cob.     These   green  lumps  are  the  pistil-bearing 


Cuckoo-Pint.  2  4 1 


flowers  ;  each  of  them  represents  a  single  very  de- 
graded blossom,  and  each  will  grow  out  at  a  later  stage 
into  one  of  the  bright  scarlet  berries  which  form  such 
beautiful  objects  in  the  hedgerow  and  waysides  during 
the  autumn  months.  We  could  not  possibly  have  a 
simpler  type  of  flower  than  these  lowest  pistil-bearing 
blossoms  ;  they  are  in  fact  the  central  floral  notion 
reduced  to  its  ideally  simplest  terms.  They  consist 
each  of  a  single  rudimentary  berry,  containing  a 
single  seed,  and  crowned  by  a  little  point  or  stigma, 
which  is  the  sensitive  surface  to  be  fertilised  by  the 
pollen  from  the  other  flowers. 

In  the  middle,  here,  come  the  flowers  of  this 
second  or  pollen-bearing  sort,  each  of  which  again 
consists  of  naked  stamens  ;  that  is  to  say,  each  flower 
is  here  reduced  to  one  solitary  part,  analogous  to  the 
little  pollen-sacs  that  you  see  hanging  out  in  the 
centre  of  a  tiger  lily  or  most  other  conspicuous  gar- 
den blossoms.  Every  such  stamen  is  made  up  of  two 
tiny  bags,  which  open  when  ripe  and  discharge  their 
golden  pollen.  Though  the  pollen  looks  to  the  naked 
eye  like  mere  yellow  dust,  yet,  when  put  under  a 
microscope,  it  is  seen  to  consist  of  small  egg-like 
bodies,  having  a  characteristic  shape  and  appearance 
in  each  different  flower,  exactly  as  the  seeds  and  fruits 
have  to  the  naked  eye.     With  these  two  essential 


242  Floivers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


elements  of  floral  architecture  we  are  now  pretty  fami- 
liar from  our  previous  examination  of  other  plants. 

On  top -of  all,  however,  come  a  group  of  very 
peculiar  blossoms,  found  only  in  the  arum  and  no- 
where else,  and  consisting  of  several  little  green 
knobs,  like  those  of  the  pistil-bearing  flowers,  but 
each  crowned  by  a  long  hair  or  filament,  bent  down- 
wards towards  the  base  of  the  hood  or  sheath,  and 
very  much  larger  than  the  sensitive  surface  of  the 
lower  blossoms.  The  origin  and  meaning  of  these 
peculiar  organs  we  will  come  to  consider  later  on  :  for 
the  present  it  will  be  sufficient  to  observe  their  shape 
and  position,  and  to  notice  that  their  hairs  point 
downward  and  inward  like  the  spikes  of  a  lobster  pot, 
at  a  point  exactly  corresponding  to  the  narrowest 
neck  or  throat  of  the  inclosing  sheath. 

And  now,  how  did  the  cuckoo-pint  come  to  possess 
this  very  singular  arrangement  of  tiny  separate  flowers 
in  a  close  spike,  female  below,  male  in  the  centre,  and 
neuter  or  rudimentary  on  the  top  of  all }  To  answer 
this  question  properly,  we  must  go  back  to  the  earlier 
ancestors  of  the  arum  tribe — and  I  may  as  well  start 
fair  by  saying  at  once  that  the  arums  are  by  descent 
degenerate  lilies,  like  wheat,  and  that  each  of  these 
very  degraded  little  flowers  really  represents  a  primi- 
tive full-blown  and  bright-coloured  lily  blossom.    You 


Cuckoo -Pint.  2  4 ; 


will  remember  that  a  true  lily  is  made  up  of  six  bril- 
liant petals  or  flower-leaves,  inclosing  six  long  pendul- 
ous stamens,  and  with  a  seed-vessel  or  ovary  of  three 
cells  in  the  very  centre.  Such  a  blossom  as  that  we 
call  a  perfect  flower,  because  it  possesses  within  itself 
all  the  component  elements  of  any  blossom — calyx, 
petals,  stamens,  and  pistil.  Moreover,  it  is,  so  to 
speak,  a  self-contained  and  self-sufficing  flower ;  it 
has  bright  petals  to  entice  an  insect  fertiliser,  pollen 
to  impregnate  its  ovary,  and  embryo  seeds  to  form  the 
future  ripe  fruit.  But  as  we  have  so  often  noticed,  it 
is  highly  undesirable  for  a  flower  to  be  fertilised  with 
pollen  from  its  own  stamens  :  those  plants  which  are 
impregnated  from  the  stamens  of  their  neighbours 
always  produce  more  seed  and  stronger  seedlings  than 
those  which  are  impregnated  with  home-made  pollen 
from  their  own  sacs.  Hence,  cross-fertilisation,  we 
know,  is  the  great  end  aimed  at  by  all  flowers  ;  and 
those  plants  which  happen  to  vary  in  any  direction 
favourable  to  cross  fertilisation  invariably  succeed  best 
in  the  struggle  for  life,  while  those  which  happen  to 
vary  in  any  direction  hostile  to  it,  or  which  acquire 
the  bad  habit  of  self-fertilisation,  tend  slowly  to  go  to 
the  wall  and  to  die  out  from  inherited  and  ever- 
increasing  feebleness  of  constitution. 

There  can  be  very  little  doubt  that  the  ancestors 


244  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

of  the  arums  had  originally  six  coloured  petals  like 
the  lilies,  for  a  reason  which  I  will  shortly  mention  ; 
and  inside  these  petals  were  six  stamens  and  a  three- 
celled  ovary  or  unripe  capsule.  It  is  a  very  long  step, 
certainly,  from  such  perfect  flowers  as  those  to  such 
very  rudimentary  and  reduced  types  as  the  little  florets 
which  we  get  in  the  cuckoo-pint,  each  consisting  of  a 
few  stamens  or  a  single  one-seeded  fruitlet,  without 
any  trace  of  petals  whatsoever.  Yet  we  have  very 
good  evidence  of  the  slow  course  of  degradation  by 
which  the  arums  have  reached  their  present  condition  ; 
and,  as  happened  in  the  case  of  wheat,  several  surviv- 
ing intermediate  forms  enable  us  to  bridge  over  the  in- 
tervening gulf.  In  other  words,  there  are  plants  which 
resemble  the  lilies  in  some  things,  while  they  resemble 
the  arums  in  others  ;  and  by  means  of  these  plants  we 
can  trace  a  regular  gradation  from  the  perfect  and 
bright-coloured  flowers  of  the  true  lily  to  the  imperfect 
and  inconspicuous  little  unisexual  blossoms  of  our 
English  cuckoo-pint.  It  is  interesting,  too,  to  observe 
how  the  very  same  original  stock  which  in  one  direc- 
tion gave  birth  to  the  degenerate  wind-fertilised  wheat 
and  grasses,  has  in  another  direction  given  birth  to  the 
equally  degenerate  but  insect-fertilised  arums  and  their 
congeners.  The  one  case  shows  the  course  of  degra- 
dation as  it  takes  place  in  poor  dry  soils  ;  the  other 


Cuckoo- Pirit.  245 


case  shows  it  as  it  takes  place  in  the  moist  and  rich 
mould  of  watery  ditches. 

Look  first  at  the  curious  flower  which  is  represented 
for  us  here  in  the  little  sketch  at  the  side.  In  the  slow 
rivers  of  Suffolk,  and  along  the  shallow  edges  of  the 
Norfolk  broads,  there  grows  a  pretty  spiky  water-plant, 
known  by  the  scientific  name  of  Acorus,  or  by  the 
simpler  English  titles  of  sweet-flag  and  sweet-sedge. 
This  acorus  is  a  highly  aromatic  reed-like  plant,  with 
long  lance-shaped  leaves,  and  a  dense  spike  of  small 
yellowish-green  blossoms,  standing  out  in  a  cylindrical 
form  from  the  thick  rod  which  does 
duty  for  its  stem.  At  first  sight 
you  would  not  say  that  these  flowers 
differed  very  much  from  those  of        "  ^  ^ 

Fig.  52. — Single  flower 

the  arum:  they  look  pretty  much  of  Sweet-sedge. 
the  same  sort  of  small  unnoticeable  green  knobs  to  a 
casual  observer.  But  when  one  comes  to  pick  out  one 
of  them  from  the  close  mass,  and  to  examine  it  with 
a  common  pocket  lens,  one  can  see  at  once  that, 
though  very  much  reduced  in  size  and  colour,  it 
is  still  at  bottom  essentially  a  lily  flower.  In  the 
diagram  we  have  one  of  these  small  blossoms  con- 
siderably enlarged,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  it 
possesses  all  the  various  parts  which  characterise 
the  true  lilies.     There  are  six  petals,  clearly  enough. 


246  Mowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

though  they  are  minute  and  green  instead  of  being 
brilHantly  coloured ;  and  they  are  closely  folded 
over  the  central  organs,  instead  of  being  bent  back 
and  displayed  ostentatiously  to  the  eyes  of  passing 
insects.  There  are  six  stamens  too,  one  under  each 
petal,  almost  concealed  by  the  scale-like  covering  ; 
and  in  the  centre  there  is  an  ovary  which  when  cut 
across  proves  to  have  sometimes  two  and  sometimes 
three  seed-bearing  cells,  for  the  number  here  has  be- 
come a  little  indefinite  :  nature,  as  so  often  happens, 
has  begun  to  lose  count.  There  can  be  no  sort  of 
doubt,  then,  that  acorus  represents  a  very  reduced 
and  degraded  lily,  still  retaining  all  its  primitive 
structural  arrangements,  but  with  its  flowers  greatly 
diminished  in  size,  and  with  its  original  bright  colour 
almost  entirely  lost  by  disuse  and  degradation. 

The  reason  why  this  little  acorus  or  sweet-sedge 
has  thus  gone  backward  in  the  course  of  development 
is  not  a  very  difficult  one  to  understand.  Brilliant 
flowers  like  the  lilies  depend  for  fertilisation  upon 
large  colour-loving  insects,  such  as  bees  and  butter- 
flies, which  are  attracted  by  their  flaunting  hues  and 
their  abundant  store  of  rich  honey,  and  so  uncon- 
sciously carry  the  impregnating  pollen  from  head  to 
head.  But  many  other  plants  find  it  suits  their  pur- 
pose better  to  depend  either  upon  the  wind  or  upon 


Cuckoo- Pint.  24; 


small  insect  friends  of  less  pronounced  aesthetic 
tastes  ;  and  this  is  especially  the  case,  among  other 
classes,  with  almost  all  waterside  plants.  Hence  such 
plants  have  usually  acquired  small  and  inconspicuous 
separate  flowers  ;  and  then,  to  make  up  for  their  loss 
In  attractiveness,  like  cheap  sweetmeats,  they  have 
very  largely  increased  their  numbers.  Or,  to  put  the 
matter  more  simply  and  physically,  in  waterside 
situations  those  plants  succeed  best  which  have  a 
relatively  large  number  of  individually  small  and 
unnoticeable  flowers,  massed  together  into  large  and 
closely  serried  bundles.  Hence,  in  such  situations, 
there  is  a  tendency  for  petals  to  be  suppressed,  and 
for  blossoms  to  grow  minute  ;  because  the  large  and 
bright  flowers  seldom  succeed  in  attracting  big  land- 
insects  like  bees  or  butterflies,  while  the  small  and 
thick-set  ones  usually  do  succeed  in  attracting  a  great 
many  little  flitting  waterside  midges.  Examples  may 
be  found  in  the  rushes,  bur-reeds,  catstails,  and  many 
other  freshwater  plants. 

For  such  a  role  our  friend  the  sweet-sedge  is 
peculiarly  well  adapted.  Its  small  yellowish  blossoms, 
though  separately  unnoteworthy,  are  rendered  con- 
spicuous in  the  mass  by  their  dense  grouping  :  and  its 
extremely  aromatic  perfume  makes  it  a  great  favourite 
with  the  tiny  flies  and   water-haunting  insects,  who 


248  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

are  much  more  guided  in  their  search  for  food  by 
scent  than  by  sight.  These  Httle  flies  carry  its  pollen 
from  one  head  to  another,  and  so  unconsciously 
fertilise  the  future  seeds,  and  give  the  plant  a  firm 
foothold  in  all  situations  which  are  naturally  suitable 
for  its  peculiar  mode  of  growth. 

The    common   marsh    calla    of  northern    Europe 

(fig-   53)  bridges  over  the  gap  between  this  English 

plant    and   the   stages    below  it 

on     the    path    of     degradation. 

Calla   has   by   disuse   quite   lost 

its  petals,  but  it  nevertheless  re- 

FiG.  53.-Singie  flower  of     tains  six  stamcns  to  each  flower, 

Marsh  Calla.  grouped    round   a  single  ovary. 

Here  the  close  relationship  to  the  true  lilies  still  remains 

quite  apparent. 

Next  in  descending  order,  on  the  way  to  the 
cuckoo-pint,  we  may  take  that  common  white  lily 
which  grows  so  often  in  cottage  windows,  and  which 
boasts  more  names,  Latin  and  English,  than  almost 
any  other  plant  whose  personal  acquaintance  I  have 
ever  had  the  pleasure  of  making.  The  members 
of  a  Sheffield  long  firm  themselves  have  seldom  so 
many  aliases  as  this  honest  and  unoffending  flower. 
Botanists  call  it  Richardia  Africana  ;  gardeners  dub 
it  Calla  ^thiopica  ;  and  the  general  public  knows  it 


Cuckoo-Pint  249 


indiscriminately  as  Ethiopian  lily,  white  calla,  snowy 
arum,  St.  Helena  arrowroot,  and  lily  of  the  Nile. 
However,  in  spite  of  its  numerous  disguises,  I  dare 
say  it  will  be  easy  to  recognise  the  plant  I  mean, 
when  I  say  that  it  is  very  much  like  a  cuckoo-pint, 
only  with  a  pure  snow-white  hood,  and  a  bright 
golden  yellow  spike  projecting  from  the  top.  As  in 
the  cuckoo-pint  this  golden  spike  is  the  part  which 
contains  the  true  flowers  ;  and  the  snow-white  hood 
is  only  a  sort  of  shroud  or  cloak  which  covers  them 
in  from  the  vulgar  gaze.  The  ^Ethiopian  lily,  then 
(since  we  must  choose  one  among  its  many  names), 
presents  us  with  a  further  step  on  the  downward 
path  of  degradation  from  the  true  lilies  towards  the 
thoroughgoing  cuckoo-pint :  for,  as  preachers  justly 
remark,  there  is  no  drawing  a  line  after  you  have 
once  begun  upon  the  wrong  track,  and  a  lily  which 
lets  in  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge  by  becoming  a 
sweet-sedge  is  almost  certain  to>  end  at  last,  in  the 
form  of  its  remote  descendants,  as  a  mere  degenerate 
and  neglected  arum. 

When  we  cut  open  the  hood  of  the  ^Ethiopian  lily, 
we  find  inside  it  a  spike  somewhat  resembling  that 
of  the  cuckoo-pint,  but  differing  in  one  or  two  im- 
portant particulars.       Near   the  bottom,   at  a   point 

corresponding  to  that  where  the  female  flowers  grow 

17 


250  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

in  the  wild  English  arum,  the  white  Ethiopian  lily 
has  a  number  of  small  greenish  knobs,  apparently 
embedded  in  a  golden  yellow  matrix  ;  at  the  top,  the 
whole  of  the  spike  consists  of  a  similar  golden-yellow 
substance,  which,  at  a  certain  period  in  the  flowering 
process,  effloresces,  so  to  speak,  with  a  copious  greasy 
white  dust,  something  like  starch  or  wheaten  flour. 
But  if  we  split  down  the  spike  itself  through  the 
centre,  we  can  soon  find  out  what  is  the  meaning 
of  this  curious  arrangement.  The  golden  substance 
which  makes  up  the  mass  of  the  spike  consists  really 
of  innumerable  yellow  stamens,  packed  so  tightly  to- 
gether over  the  whole  stem,  and  so  closely  sessile  (as 
We  call  it  technically)  upon  the  central  axis,  that 
they  look  like  a  single  piece  of  homogeneous  waxy 
material.  You  can  separate  them  from  one  another, 
however,  with  your  fingers,  and  then  you  see  that 
each  one  is  roughly  pentagonal  or  hexagonal  in 
outline,  owing  to  the  pressure  of  its  surrounding 
neighbours,  and  that  it  consists  essentially  of  a  small 
pollen  bag,  containing  a  quantity  of  yellowish  liquid. 
When  the  stamens  are  quite  ripe,  this  liquid  assumes 
the  form  of  small  white  pollen  grains,  which  are 
pushed  out  as  the  bags  open,  and  become  the  efflor- 
escence or  powder  that  covers  the  spike  in  its  ripe 
state.     At  the  bottom  of  the  spike,  where  we  get  the 


Cuckoo- Pint,  251 


pistil-bearing  flowers  in  the  cuckoo-pint,  the  ^Ethio- 
pian  lily  has  several  small  blossoms  intermediate 
between  the  perfect  flowers  of  the  acorus,  or  the  half- 
perfect  flowers  of  the  marsh  calla,  and  the  very  im- 
perfect flowers  of  the  arum  ;  for  each  of  them  has 
here  a  central  green  knob  or  capsule,  surrounded 
irregularly  by  four  or  five  stamens,  but  without  any 
petals,  or  even  any  scales  to  represent  them.  These 
form  the  green  bodies  which  I  have  already  described 
as  apparently  embedded  in  a  hard  yellow  matrix  ;  and 
that  yellow  matrix  is  composed  of  the  stamens.  The 
lower  part  of  the  ^Ethiopian  lily,  in  fact,  consists  of 
irregular  flowers  which,  like  those  of  the  marsh  calla, 
have  quite  lost  their  petals,  but  which  still  retain  an 
indefinite  number  of  stamens  grouped  around  a  single 
pistil ;  while  in  the  upper  part,  as  in  the  central  group 
of  the  arum,  the  pistils  have  disappeared  also,  and 
only  the  stamens  remain.  Such  a  plant  as  this  lily, 
then,  is  clearly  on  the  way  to  becoming  what  the 
arum  has  actually  become  :  its  flowers  already  show 
a  tendency  toward  the  unisexual  condition.  In  the 
upper  portion  they  have  all  become  actually  unisexual, 
for  there  we  get  nothing  but  stamens  ;  in  the  lower 
part  they  remain  irregularly  bisexual,  for  there,  though 
the  stamens  are  often  reduced  in  number — nature  los- 
ing count  again — some  of  them  still  remain  embedded 


252  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

on  the  spike  between  the  scattered  pistils.  This 
result  is  just  what  you  might  naturally  expect  from 
squeezing  a  lot  of  marsh  calla  blossoms  closely 
together  on  a  spike.  Even  in  the  upper  half  of  the 
spike,  the  blossoms  often  keep  up  some  marks  of  their 
original  bisexual  character,  for  you  will  occasionally 
find  a  few  stray  green  knobs  sparsely  sprinkled  here 
and  there  among  the  golden  stamens  of  the  top  portion. 
Nevertheless,  we  may  fairly  say  that  even  here  a  ten- 
dency towards  specialisation  has  been  distinctly  set 
up :  the  uppermost  flowers  tend  to  become  almost 
entirely  pollen  bearing  sacs,  and  the  lowermost 
flowers  tend  to  become  preponderatingly,  though 
not  entirely,  seed-bearing  ovaries. 

Now  if  we  turn  from  these  transitional  steps  to  the 
completely  developed  arum,  what  do  we  find  ?  Here, 
the  top  of  the  spike  has  become  absolutely  bald  and 
bare  of  flowers,  instead  of  being  covered,  as  in  the 
Ethiopian  lily,  with  thickly  grouped  florets  up  to 
its  very  summit  ;  and  at  the  same  time,  the  actual 
flowers  in  the  lower  portion,  instead  of  running  to- 
gether into  an  uninterrupted  cone,  are  separated  into 
three  distinct  groups  or  bodies.  At  the  bottom  of  all, 
as  in  the  .Ethiopian  lily,  we  now  get  the  female 
flowers  alone  ;  only,  instead  of  being  intermixed  with 
stamens,   they  consist  simply  of  naked  ovaries  ;  the 


Cnckoo-Piii  t.  253 


differentiation  or  specialisation  of  the  flowers  is  here 
complete.  Above  them,  as  before,  we  get  the  male 
flowers,  reduced  to  a  single  stamen,  or  rather  to  a 
group  of  from  four  to  six  stamens  each,  all  run  to- 
gether :  for  though  it  is  usual  to  consider  each  stamen 
as  a  separate  flower  (which  it  certainly  is  in  some  still 
more  degraded  arums,  like  the  little  *  Capuchin '  of 
southern  Europe),  I  think  the  analogy  of  marsh  calla 
and  the  /Ethiopian  lily  justifies  us  in  regarding  them 
as  groups  of  six,  more  or  less  defective,  and  jammed 
closely  together,  with  the  ovaries  crushed  out  between 
them.  And  at  the  top  of  all  we  get  a  perfectly 
new  factor  in  the  compound  community — a  number 
of  green  sacs  capped  by  downward-pointing  hairs, 
which  are,  in  fact,  abortive  pistils,  like  those  organs 
that  form  the  lower  group,  only  with  their  ovaries 
barren,  and  their  styles  or  sensitive  surfaces  length- 
ened out  into  spiky  hairs.^  What  may  be  the  use 
or  function  of  these  curious  objects  we  will  proceed 
to  inquire  a  little  later :  for  the  present  we  must 
turn  our  attention  to  the  origin  of  another  part 
of  the  cuckoo-pint's  apparent  blossom,  the  large 
and  conspicuous   greenish-purple   hood,  which  alone 

'  It  is  usual  to  treat  these  organs  as  staminodes- that  is  to  say, 
abortive  stamens.  I  know  no  reason  for  this  classification,  and  the 
analopy  of  the  scattered  ovaries  in  the  upper  part  of  the  /Ethiopian  lily 
leads  me  rather  to  regard  them  as  altered  pistils. 


254  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

composes    the   flower    in    the   popular   sense   of   the 
word. 

There  is  nothing  at  all  like  that,  a  casual  observer 
would  probably  be  tempted  at  first  to  say,  in  any 
ordinary  true  lily  that  any  one  ever  yet  came  across. 
A  bunch  of  lilies  growing  on  a  stalk,  with  a  sort  of 
huge  winding-sheet  wrapped  round  them,  is  a  thing 
that  surely  nobody  has  ever  seen.  So  it  would  seem 
at  a  first  glance ;  and  yet  there  is  one  lily-like  plant 
that  we  all  know  well,  in  which  the  flowers  are  at  one 
time  wrapped  up  in  exactly  such  an  enveloping  sheet. 
Have  you  ever  watched  a  narcissus  or  a  daffodil  un- 
folding its  pretty  yellow  buds  }  If  you  have,  you  will 
remember  that  at  first  they  are  all  tightly  covered  over 
by  a  thin  papery  membrane,  shaped  exactly  like  the 
hood  of  this  cuckoo-pint ;  and  that  after  the  scented 
blossoms  have  all  come  out,  this  membrane,  or  spathe, 
as  we  call  it  in  the  horrid  technical  language  of  botany, 
turns  back  upon  the  stem,  like  a  sort  of  cup  below  the 
flowers.  To  be  sure,  the  daffodil  and  the  narcissus 
are  not,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word,  true  lilies  at 
all,  but  amaryllids,  because  they  have  got  an  inferior 
instead  of  a  superior  ovary  ;  but,  even  in  the  technically 
restricted  lily  family  itself,  there  are  lilies  with  just 
such  a  spathe  or  enveloping  membrane,  as  in  the 
familiar  head  of  onions  and  garlic,  as  well  as  in  some 


Cuckoo-Pint.  255 


more  respectable  and  dignified  flowers.  Now,  one  has 
only  got  to  suppose  the  number  of  buds  in  each  head 
largely  increased,  the  whole  head  lengthened  out  into  a 
spike,  and  the  spathe  or  sheath  grown  larger  into  a 
completely  inclosing  hood,  and  there  we  have  at  once 
an  arum  or  an  Ethiopian  lily.  Only,  as  often  happens 
under  such  circumstances,  the  individual  flowers  have 
now  grown  too  small  to  attract  the  fertilising  insects 
separately  on  their  own  account ;  so  the  spathe  or  hood 
has  to  do  duty  for  them  all  at  once  collectively.  It 
incloses  and  conceals  the  various  minute  flowers,  but  it 
becomes  itself  coloured  and  attractive,  so  as  to  allure 
the  eyes  of  the  little  insects  on  behalf  of  the  entire  com- 
munity. In  other  words,  when  the  central  flowers  had 
become  so  much  diminished  in  size  by  disuse,  by  loss  of 
their  petals,  and  by  specialisation  of  sexes,  they  ran  no 
chance  of  getting  fertilised  at  all  unless  they  possessed 
some  exceptional  means  of  attracting  insects.  Hence 
those  alone  have  survived  which  happened  to  develop 
some  such  attractive  organ  as  the  hood  of  the  Ethiopian 
lily  or  the  purple  central  spike  of  the  English  arum. 

And  now  we  come  at  last  to  the  final  purpose  of 
all  these  curious  structural  arrangements.  The  object 
of  them  all  is  of  course  to  ensure  the  cross-fertilisation 
of  the  different  heads  of  flowers  ;  but  the  special  way 
in  which  they  effect  this  universal  end  is  singularly 


256  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 


ingenious,  interesting^,  and  almost  intentional  in  its 
design.  The  Ethiopian  lily,  one  can  readily  under- 
stand, attracts  many  insects  by  its  large  brilliant  white 
hood,  as  well  as  by  the  rich  golden-yellow  colour  of 
the  stamens  which  cover  the  summit  of  its  spike.  But 
in  the  arum  the  top  of  the  spike  is  bare,  and  has 
become  expanded  into  a  club-shaped  organ,  which  is 
deeply  tinged  with  purple,  and  stands  out  vividly 
against  the  bright  green  of  the  spathe  at  its  back,  so  as 
to  form  an  excellent  advertisement  for  the  giddy  eyes 
of  little  passing  winged  insects.  It  is  upon  these 
insects  that  the  arum  depends  entirely  for  fertilisation, 
and  the  way  in  which  it  manages  to  obtain  their 
services  is  as  curious  as  anything  in  the  whole  range 
of  vegetable  existence. 

If,  when  the  arum-flowers  are  just  beginning  to 
blossom,  I  were  to  cut  down  one  of  the  hoods  half- 
way through  the  centre,  sidev/ays,  I  should  find  a 
great  many  tiny  winged  flies  all  crawling  about  at 
the  very  bottom  of  the  deep  tube.  They  have  come 
from  some  other  neighbouring  arum-flower,  where 
they  have  been  well  dusted  with  the  golden  pollen  ; 
and  they  crawl  down  the  neck  of  the  hood,  past  the 
lobster  pot  hairs  which  close  its  narrowest  portion, 
into  the  broader  open  space  beneath.  Here  they 
find  the  pistil-bearing  blossoms  just  ripe  for  impreg- 


Ctickoo-Pint.  257 


nation  ;  and,  crawling  over  them  in  an  aimless  sort  of 
fashion,  they  rub  off  upon  their  sensitive  surfaces 
some  of  the  pollen  which  they  brought  with  them 
from  the  last  plant  they  visited.  This  pollen  thus 
cross-fertilises  the  fruit,  and  produces  in  it  seeds 
which  are  the  product  of  two  distinct  parents,  and 
therefore  capable  of  springing  up  into  vigorous  seed- 
lings of  the  strongest  sort. 

But  though  the  small  flies  have  thus  benefited  the 
plant  by  fertilising  its  ovaries  with  pollen  brought 
from  another  head,  they  have  as  yet  got  no  return  for 
their  trouble  in  the  shape  of  meat  or  drink  :  and, 
unless  they  did  so,  they  certainly  would  not  take  the 
trouble  to  visit  any  other  flower  of  the  same  sort. 
The  stamens  are  not  yet  ripe,  and  do  not  ripen  until 
after  the  pistils  have  set  their  fruit.  If  they  did 
otherwise,  then  the  pollen  would  fall  from  them  down 
upon  the  sensitive  surfaces  of  their  sister  blossoms 
below,  and  the  plant  would  accordingly  be  self- 
fertilised — a  thing  to  be  always  avoided  as  far  as  pos- 
sible. Accordingly,  it  is  a  fixed  rule  in  the  cuckoo- 
pints  that  the  pistils,  which  are  below,  come  to 
maturity  first,  while  the  stamens,  which  are  above, 
shed  their  stock  of  pollen  a  day  or  two  later.  This 
being  so,  the  flies  find  nothing  in  the  new  flower  to 
detain   them   any   longer  ;    and,   if  they   could,  they 


258  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

would  crawl  up  the  spike  and  get  out  again  by  the 
same  way  as  they  got  in,  never  troubling  themselves 
any  more  about  such  useless  flowers.  Here,  however, 
the  curious  lobster-pot  hairs  for  the  first  time  come 
into  play.  They  act,  in  short,  exactly  like  a  common 
eel-trap.  The  flies  walked  in  easily  enough,  the  way 
the  hairs  naturally  pointed  ;  but  when  they  try  to 
walk  out  again,  they  find  their  way  completely 
blocked  by  the  chevaux-de-frise  of  stiff  bristles. 
There  is  nothing  that  beats  a  crawling  insect  like  a 
thicket  of  hairs  ;  he  finds  it  as  impossible  to  creep  up 
against  their  grain  as  we  ourselves  find  it  to  force  our 
way  through  a  tropical  jungle  of  cactus  and  prickly 
spurges.  So  there  they  wait  perforce  for  a  time  in 
durance  vile,  wandering  up  and  down  helplessly 
among  the  lower  flowers,  and  effectually  brushing 
off  against  them  every  single  grain  of  pollen  which 
they  brought  on  their  legs  or  breasts  from  the  last 
flower  they  visited. 

At  last,  in  a  day  or  so,  the  young  berries  begin  to 
swell  slowly,  and  all  the  pistil-bearing  flowers  show 
by  this  quickening  action  that  they  have  been  duly 
and  properly  fertilised.  Then  comes  the  turn  of  the 
stamens.  One  after  another  they  open  their  little 
double  pollen-sacs,  and  shed  their  golden  powder 
down  upon  the  wings  and  bodies  of  the  small  flies 


Cuckoo-Pint,  259 


imprisoned  beneath.     Even  if  a  little  of  it  happens  to 
catch  upon  the  pistils  here  and  there,  that  does  not 
matter  now,  for  all  the  ovaries  are  already  duly  impreg- 
nated, and  the  sensitive  surfaces  have  shrivelled  utterly 
away  ;  so  most  of  the  pollen  falls  on  to  the  floor  of 
the  hood,  where  the  small  flies  are  waiting  impatiently 
and  hungrily  for  the  Danae   flood.     It  covers  them 
all  over  from  head  to    foot   with  the  golden  grains, 
and  clogs  their  legs  and  wings  and  bodies  in  every 
portion.     A  fine  time  the  flies  have  of  it  then.     They 
get  actually  drunk  with  pollen  after  their  fast ;  and, 
if  you  cut  open  one  of  the  hoods  in  this  stage  of 
development,  you  will  find  the  little  creatures  posi- 
tively reeling  about  in  their  intoxication,  and  so  full- 
fed  with  rich  grains  that  they  can  hardly  use  their 
legs  or  wings  to  crawl  or  fly.     A  little  fresh  air  seems 
to  revive  them  slightly,  as  is  often  the  case  with  other 
gentlemen    under    similar   circumstances ;    and   then 
they  can  feebly  fly  away  after  a  few  minutes. 

But  in  the  natural  state  of  things,  when  no  wan- 
dering botanist  comes  with  his  penknife  to  make  what 
he  calls  in  his  lively  language  a  '  longitudinal  section 
of  Arum  maculatum,'  the  flies  remain  at  the  bottom 
of  their  deep  well  till  they  have  eaten  almost  all  the 
pollen,  and  got  most  helplessly  and  stupidly  drunk  in 
the  process.      A  great  waste  of  pollen  this,  for  the 


26o  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

plant,  of  course  ;  but  still  it  costs  no  more  than  honey 
would  do,  and  quite  enough  remains  on  the  legs  and 
wings  of  the  flies  to  impregnate  their  fellow-blossoms 
on  another  plant.  At  last  all  the  pollen  is  shed 
and  eaten,  and  then  the  flies  again  become  anxious 
to  shift  their  quarters  to  some  more  favourable  spot, 
where  there  is  more  food  to  be  found,  and  another 
drunken  orgy  to  be  expected.  This  time,  however, 
the  hairs  no  longer  impede  their  progress  ;  they  have 
all  shrivelled  up  meanwhile,  and  the  eel-trap  is  there- 
fore now  dissolved  ;  so  the  flies  hurry  away  once  more, 
covered  with  the  stock  of  pollen-dust  which  has  been 
showered  down  upon  them  by  their  late  host. 

One  might  suppose,  at  first,  that  after  one  such 
experience  the  flies  would  studiously  avoid  cuckoo- 
pints  in  future.  Nothing  of  the  sort.  Experience 
seems  to  be  thrown  away  upon  insects  ;  and  besides, 
the  little  creatures  seem  actually  to  enjoy  their  intoxi- 
cated revels.  Pollen  apparently  acts  upon  them  as  an 
incentive,  exactly  as  opium  acts  upon  a  Chinaman. 
The  first  thing  they  do  the  moment  they  are  released 
is  to  forthwith  fly  off  to  the  nearest  other  cuckoo-pint. 
They  see  a  purple,  club-shaped  spike,  somewhere  close 
by,  overtopping  the  folded  lips  of  the  green  hood,  and 
they  make  straight  for  that  well-known  signpost,  as 
the  lordly  human  race  makes  for  the  flaring  lights  of 


Cuckoo-Pint,  261 


a  gilded  public-house.  Once  more  they  crawl  down 
the  funnel-shaped  tube  ;  once  more  they  pass  the  eel- 
pot  hairs  ;  and  once  more  they  rub  off  the  pollen  that 
clings  to  their  legs  and  sides  upon  the  sensitive  surfaces 
of  the  lower  flowers.  For  a  while  they  have  again  to 
fast  in  their  narrow  prison  ;  and  then  the  stamens 
of  the  second  arum  open  their  pollen-sacs,  and  dust 
the  greedy  insects  a  second  or  third  time  with  golden 
grains.  So,  throughout  the  whole  flowering  season  of 
the  arums,  these  little  flies  go  about  from  head  to 
head  in  constant  relays,  unconsciously  benefiting  the 
plant,  while  they  are  effecting  theirown  hungry  purpose 
in  eating  up  the  spare  pollen.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  insects,  the  only  use  of  arums  is  to  produce 
food  and  shelter  for  wandering  flies  ;  but  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  plant,  the  only  use  of  insects  is 
to  act  as  common  carriers  for  the  conveyance  of  pollen 
from  one  head  to  another.  Man,  however,  is  far  wiser 
and  more  expansive  in  his  ideas  about  the  economy 
of  nature  than  either :  according  to  him,  the  real, 
final  end  of  all  this  beautiful  and  marvellous  me- 
chanism is  to  produce  Portland  arrowroot  for  starch- 
ing his  own  civilised  shirt-fronts,  wristbands,  and 
collars. 

After  the  dissolute  small  flies  have  performed  their 
function  in  the  economy  of  the  cuckoo-pint  by  thus 


262  Flozucrs  and  their  Pedigrees. 

fertilising  the  small  green  ovaries,  the  plant  begins  to 
enter  upon  a  fresh  phase  of  existence.  It  has  now 
no  further  use  for  its  hood  and  its  purple-topped  spike, 
which  have  answered  their  purpose  in  attracting  the 
insects  ;  and  therefore  it  gets  rid  of  them  in  the  same 
summary  way  in  which  mankind  generally  get  rid  of 
a  faithful  old  horse,  or  a  superannuated  servant.  The 
hood  withers  slowly  away  ;  the  top  of  the  spike,  as 
far  down  as  the  base  of  the  cluster  of  stamens,  grad- 
ually decays  ;  and  at  last  you  find  nothing  left  but  a 
bunch  of  rather  shapeless  green  berries,  elevated  on  a 
stiff,  fleshy  stalk,  and  with  a  scar  at  their  bottom  in  the 
place  where  the  hood  used  once  to  join  on. 
As  summer  wears  away  the  berries  grow 
bigger  and  bigger,  while  at  the  same  time 
they  become  redder  and  redder.  At  last, 
with  the  first  approach  of  autumn,  they  ap- 
pear as  the  bright  cluster  of  coral-coloured 
berries,  represented  at  the  side,  with  which  we  are  all 
so  familiar  in  our  September  hedgerows. 

What  is  the  use  of  this  new  manoeuvre  ?  Well,  it 
is  not  simply  that  common  to  most  succulent  fruits. 
Each  of  these  bright  red  berries  incloses  a  single  hard 
nut-like  seed.  Its  object  is  to  attract  the  fruit-eating 
birds,  the  field-mice,  and  the  other  small  animals,  to 
eat  it  up  whole.     For  this  end,  just  as  so  many  flowers 


Cuckoo- Pint.  263 


have  bright-coloured  petals  to  attract  the  eyes  of 
insects,  we  know  that  fruits  have  bright-coloured 
pulpy  coverings  to  attract  the  eyes  of  birds  or  mam- 
mals. And  as  the  flowers  put  honey  in  their  nectaries 
as  an  allurement  for  the  bees,  so  the  fruits  put 
sugary  juices  in  their  pulp  as  an  allurement  for  the 
robins  and  bullfinches.  So  far,  the  trick  is  just  the 
ordinary  plan  of  all  fruit-bearers.  The  arum,  however, 
has  a  still  more  cruel  and  insidious  mode  of  procedure. 
Its  berries  are  poisonous  ;  and  very  often,  I  believe,  they 
destroy  the  little  birds  that  they  have  enticed  by  their 
delusive  prettiness.  Then  the  body  of  the  murdered 
robin  decays  away,  and  forms  a  mouldering  manure- 
heap,  from  which  the  young  cuckoo-pint  derives  a 
store  of  fresh  nutriment.  I  will  not  positively  assert 
that  it  is  for  this  reason  the  cuckoo-pint  has  acquired 
its  poisonous  juices  ;  but  I  cannot  help  seeing  that  if 
any  berry  happened  to  show  any  tendency  in  such  a 
direction,  and  so  occasionally  poisoned  the  creatures 
which  eat  it,  it  would  thereby  obtain  an  advantage  in 
the  struggle  for  existence,  and  would  tend  to  increase 
the  poisonous  habit  so  far  as  it  continued  to  obtain 
any  further  advantage  by  so  doing.  To  some  people 
this  may  seem  grotesque  ;  but  the  grotesqueness  is  in 
the  facts  of  nature,  not  in  the  appreciation  of  their 
inevitable  results.     Poisonous  berries  are  unquestion7 


264  Flozvers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

ably  useful  to  the  plants  which  bear  them  ;  and,  if  we 
find  their  usefulness  ridiculous,  that  is  a  peculiarity  of 
our  own  sense  of  humour  which  in  no  way  affects  the 
abstract  truth  of  the  observation.  It  is  impossible, 
in  fact,  that  a  plant  should  not  benefit  by  having  its 
berries  poisonous,  and  so  some  plants  must  necessarily, 
in  the  infinite  variability  of  nature,  acquire  the  property 
of  killing  their  friendly  allies.  It  has  been  asked 
why  the  birds  have  not  on  their  side  learnt  that  tlie 
arum  is  poisonous.  The  very  question  shows  at  once 
an  ingrained  inability  to  understand  the  working  of 
natural  selection.  Every  bird  that  eats  arum  berries 
gets  poisoned :  but  the  other  birds  don't  hold  a 
coroner's  inquest  upon  its  body  or  inquire  into  the 
cause  of  death.  Naturally  the  same  bird  never  eats 
the  berries  twice,  and  so  experience  has  nothing  more 
to  do  with  the  matter  than  in  the  famous  illogicality 
about  the  skinning  of  eels. 

There  are  many  other  curious  points  of  interest 
about  the  arum  :  there  are  the  glossy  arrow-headed 
leaves  ;  there  is  the  sharp,  deterrent,  pungent  juice  ; 
the  tall,  succulent,  biting  stem  ;  the  thick,  starchy, 
poisonous  rootstock,  where  the  plant  lays  by  the  store 
of  nutriment  it  collects  each  summer  for  next  spring's 
flowering  season.  All  these  demand  and  repay  the 
minutest  and    most   careful   study.     But    life   is  too 


Cuckoo- Pint.  265 


short  for  us  to  know  even  a  cuckoo-pint  to  the  very 
bottom  ;  and  so,  perhaps,  instead  of  turning  aside  to 
other  subjects  of  interest  in  its  structure  and  functions, 
it  will  be  best  to  recapitulate  afresh  from  an  historical 
point  of  view  the  main  steps  in  the  evolution  of  the 
arum  tribe  at  which  we  have  already  glanced. 

Originally,  the  ancestors  of  the  arum  were  a  sort 
of  lilies,  with  bright  petals,  and  with  six  stamens  and 
a  three-celled  ovary  to  each  flower.  They  had  also  a 
papery  spathe  or  hood,  like  the  narcissus  and  the 
onion,  at  the  base  of  their  blossoms  ;  and  this  spathe 
has  been  gradually  modified  into  the  green  cap  of 
the  modern  cuckoo-pint.  Slowly  the  flowers  became 
reduced  in  size,  like  those  of  acorus  ;  and  then  they 
grew  degraded  In  structure,  till  at  last  they  entirely 
lost  all  their  petals — a  stage  at  which  the  lower  flowers 
of  the  Ethiopian  lily  still  remain.  Next,  the  blossoms 
began  to  differentiate  into  three  distinct  groups,  which 
owed  their  specialised  form  to  the  new  mode  of  insect 
fertilisation.  The  lowest  flowers  lost  all  their  stamens, 
and  were  reduced  to  a  single  ovary  each.  The  middle 
flowers  lost  all  their  ovaries,  and  were  reduced  to  a 
few  stamens  each.  The  topmost  flowers  underwent 
a  still  more  curious  change,  and  after  losing  their 
stamens  made  their  ovaries  abortive,  in  order  to  act 

as  eel-traps    for    the    fertilising   flies.     The    series  of 

18 


266  Flowers  and  their  Pedigrees. 

alterations  by  which  these  structural  modifications 
were  brought  about  must  have  been  very  slow  ;  and 
they  must  have  been  produced  by  the  constant  fertili- 
sation of  such  arums  as  best  retained  the  visiting 
flies,  and  the  dying  out  of  such  as  did  not  well  retain 
them.  Last  of  all,  the  berries  grew  large  and  red 
under  the  influence  of  animal  selection,  those  berries 
which  attracted  birds  succeeding  in  producing  new 
plants,  while  those  which  did  not  so  attract  them  died 
out  unsuccessfully.  And  at  the  same  time  the  ovary 
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distinct  coloured  lilies  grew  to  be  a  cuckoo-pint  with 
an  inclosing  hood  and  a  spike  of  minute  central  in- 
conspicuous flowers. 


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Plant   Relations. 

A  First  Book  of  Botany.  By  John  M.  Coulter^ 
A,  M.,  Ph.  D.,  Head  of  Department  of  Botany, 
University  of  Chicago.     i2mo.     Cloth,  |i.io. 

'•'Plant  Relations'  is  charming  both  in  matter  and  style.  The  book  is 
superbly  manufactured,  letterpress  and  illustration  yielding  the  fullest  measure 
of  delight  from  every  page." — JV.  McK.  Vance,  Superintendent  of  Schools, 
Urbanoy  Ohio. 

**  I  am  extremely  pleased  with  the  text-book,  '  Plant  Relations.'  " — H. 
W.  Conn,  fVesleyan  Uni'versity,  Middletoivn,  Conn. 

"Dr.  Coulter's  'Plant  Relations,'  a  first  text-book  of  botany,  is  a  wholly 
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book.      It  is  heartily  recommended." — Educational  Re'vieiv. 

"It  is  a  really  beautiful  book,  the  illustrations  being  in  many  cases  simply 
exquisite,  and  is  written  in  the  clear,  direct,  and  simple  style  that  the  authoi 
knows  so  well  how  to  use.  A  very  strong  feature  of  the  work  is  the  promi-" 
nence  given  to  ecological  relations,  which  I  agree  with  Dr.  Coulter  should  be 
made  the  leading  subject  of  study  in  the  botany  of  the  preparatory  schools." — ' 
V.  M..  Spalding,   Uni-versity  of  Michigan. 

"  We  can  hardly  conceive  of  a  wiser  way  to  introduce  the  pupil  to  the  fas- 
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too,  without  any  sacrifice  of  scientific  accuracy. " — School  Re-vieiv. 

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"  It  will  surely  be  a  Godsend  for  those  high-school  teachers  who  are  strug- 
gling with  insufficient  laboratory  equipment,  and  certainly  presents  the  mosl 
readable  account  of  plants  of  any  single  elementary  book  I  have  seen." — L.  M. 
Underiuood,  Columbia  Uni-versity. 

"  We  heartily  recommend  his  book  as  one  of  the  clearest  and  simplest  pres- 
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Harold's  Quests.      Book  III 50 

Harold's  Explorations.     Book  IV 60 

Harold's  Discussions.     Book  V 7a 

Uncle  Robert's  Geography.     Francis  W.  Parker  and 
Nellie  L.  Helm. 

Playtime  and  Seedtime.      Book  I 32 

On  the  Farm.     Book  II 42 

Uncle  Robert's  Visit.     Book  III 50 

News  from  the  Birds.      Leander  S.  Kevser 60 

Historic   Boston  and   its   Neighborhood.     Edward  Everett  Hale     .        .50 

The  Earth  and  Sky.     Edward  S.   Holden 28 

The  Family  of  the  Sun       Edward  S.   Holdfn 50 

Stories  of  the  Great  Astronomers.      Edward  S.  Holden      ...        .75 

About  the  W^eather.     Mark  W.   Harrington 65 

Stories  from  the  Arabian   Nights.      Adam  Singieton 65 

Our  Country's  Flag  and  the  Flags  of  Foreign  Countries.     Edward 

S.  Holden 80 

Our  Navy  in  Time  of  W^ar.     Franklin  Matthews 75 

The  Chronicles  of  Sir  John   Froissart.     Adam  Singleton    ...        .65 

The  Storied  West  Indies.     F.  A.  Ober 75 

Uncle  Sam's  Soldiers.     O.  P.  Austin  ....  .        .        -75 

Marco  Polo,  the  Great  Traveler.     Edward  Atherton  ...        .65 

Others  in  preparation. 

D.     APPLETON     AND    COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


By  R  SCHUYLER  MATHEWS* 


Familiar  Flowers  of  Field  and  Garden. 

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Familiar  Trees  and  their  Leaves. 

New  edition.    With  pictures  of  representative  trees  in  colors,  and  over 

200  drawings  from  nature  by  the   Author.     With  the  botanical  name 

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Familiar  Life  in  Field  and  Forest. 

With  many  Illustrations.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

"  A  very  attractive  boik,  which  contains  a  mass  of  useful  information  and  curious 
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WMth  130  Illustrations  by  the  Author.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

"Which  one  of  us,  whether  afoot,  awheel,  on  horseback,  or  in  comfortable  rarriage, 
has  not  whiled  away  the  time  by  glancing  about  ?  How  many  of  us,  however,  have 
taken  in  the  details  of  what  charms  us?  We  ?ee  the  floweripg  fields  and  budding 
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much  do  we  know  of  what  we  sense?  These  questions,  these  doubts  have  occurred  to 
all  of  us,  and  it  is  to  answer  them  that  Mr.  Mathews  sets  forth.  It  is  to  his  credit  that 
he  succeeds  so  well.  He  puts  before  us  in  chronological  order  the  flowers,  birds,  and 
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for  Mr.  Mathews  is  his  own  illustrator." — Boston  Journal. 


APPLETON      AND      COMPANY,     NEW     YORK 


North  Carolina  State  University  Libraries 


